


A Heart That Offends

by noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, but just so you know!, jon/dany is a Thing here but it's neither healthy nor endgame, jon/sansa is endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12504480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth/pseuds/noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth
Summary: Jon comes home. Unfortunately, he brings Daenerys with him. The Northerners are furious, Arya can hardly look at him, Bran needs to tell him something important, and Sansa -- well, Sansa is haunting Jon's every thought. Just another post-S7 fic.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "John My Beloved" by Sufjan Stevens because I've had it stuck in my head for days:
> 
> I am a man with a heart that offends  
> With its lonely and greedy demands  
> There's only a shadow of me  
> In a manner of speaking I'm dead

When Daenerys asks about his family, he doesn’t know why he hesitates. 

She’s stretched out beside him, naked and luminous, the warmest thing he’s ever touched, but it is hard to hold her and think of Winterfell. His chest aches whenever he tries. It has been easier, these past moons, to immerse himself in thoughts of the war and the Night King and the beautiful foreign queen who wants him. It has been easier to tell himself, each time he didn’t write to Sansa or sent only a brief, impersonal missive, that his duty lay on Dragonstone, or beyond the Wall, or in King’s Landing — anywhere but home.

But now he is going home, and Daenerys is coming with him. He does not know what they are to each other; they have lain together but have made no vows, exchanged no promises. Within days the entire ship knows what they are doing, but only Tyrion and Davos have dared to comment, each asking in his own way if Jon and Daenerys plan to marry. (Tyrion had seemed irritated at the prospect, Davos encouraging, but Jon had given them both the same reply: silence.) Jon knows he should think on it, knows it is the honorable thing to do, but thinking about marriage is like thinking of Winterfell, and it fills him with nothing but unease.

He can only assume they have talked to Daenerys too, but she hasn’t said a word to him.

Still, there is no reason to be surprised that she would want to know more about the Starks. They are Jon’s family, yes, but they are also the most powerful house in the North, an old and noble family whose forefather had once knelt to hers. Daenerys knows that without the support of the Starks, she cannot hope to secure the loyalty of the North. And Jon may be a damned fool, but he is not so foolish as to believe that Daenerys has set aside her quest for the Seven Kingdoms. She may understand that the Great War must be fought first, but for all her soft eyes and soft lips and soft skin, she has not softened on _this_ : she believes that she is queen of them all, by right of blood, by right of fire. She will try to win the Starks to her side, and must hope that Jon will ease her way.

And he will, he wants to — but to speak of them feels as if he’s giving something away. Again.

“Jon?” Her fingers graze his chest, trail across his stomach. “What are they like?”

He glances down at her silver-pale hair, her smooth-skinned back, her breasts that press against his flesh. She is lovely, so lovely, but he tastes something bitter at the back of his throat and has to look away.

He’s grown accustomed to the rocking of the ship, the sound of waves lapping against the hull, but when he closes his eyes it is all the more acute: the shifting all around him, the water’s low, insistent pull. He thinks of the hot springs of Winterfell. He thinks of Hardhome. He thinks of slipping into the frozen lake above the Wall and how he was ready to die, again, but then he’d remembered Ygritte telling him _first we’ll live_ , her red hair bright as anything, and Sansa as a girl, her hair in ribbons, singing a song to herself, and Sansa as she was last he saw her, crowned in snowflakes — and now a dragon was dead and the White Walkers marched south, to Winterfell, to _home_ — and he’d pulled himself, he still doesn’t know how, from the depths of the water.

“Jon?” Daenerys prompts again, and he opens his eyes.

“Bran is … ” He was a boy when Jon left, so small beneath his furs, and Jon hadn’t known if he would ever open his eyes again. But he did. He lived. He survived. “I don’t know,” Jon says at last. “He must be a man grown by now. I don’t know what’s become of him. He always wanted to be a knight.” Back then they’d all had impossible dreams.

“Perhaps he’s a knight.”

“No,” Jon says. “He had a fall. He can’t walk.”

Daenerys murmurs an acknowledgment into his chest.

He doesn’t know why, but he almost says, _He was named for my uncle Brandon, the one your father killed_. It’s not fair, but then he thinks of Benjen and his father and his grandfather and Robb too: how many Starks would die because they were foolhardy and honorable and stupid? 

Sansa had tried to tell him, hadn’t she? _You must be smarter than them_. He wishes he’d listened.

“You have a young sister as well, don’t you?”

“Aye. Arya.” He swallows the pain. “Never wanted to be a proper lady, wouldn’t listen to her Septa or her mother’s scoldings. She wanted to spar in the training yard, was always scrapping with the boys. I s’pose she wanted to be a knight too.”

Daenerys huffs a small laugh. “I like the sound of her,” she says.

“It was her I missed most when I first left home,” he admits. “But I haven’t seen her in years.”

“You will see her soon.”

It is both a comfort, and not. Ever since Sansa’s letter — ever since he met Brienne in the Dragon Pit and she told him what she could of Arya, of her long absence “abroad” and her skill with a sword — it has been as if he could already feel her in his arms, as if he’s lifted her up and spun her around like he’d done when she but a small child. He wants to see her smile more than anything. But Brienne, not bothering to hide her disapproval, had said, _You shouldn’t have left. Lady Arya and Lady Sansa … there is tension between them. Lady Arya has a lot of anger in her. And I fear whatever Littlefinger is whispering in Sansa’s ear._

The thought of Petyr Baelish makes him frown. He’s ashamed now to think of the sharpness in his voice when he’d demanded to know why Brienne had left Sansa’s side if Littlefinger was still a problem. _Your sworn duty is to protect her_ , Jon had snapped. Brienne had only clenched her jaw, but her squire, Podrick, had half-shouted, _That’s not fair! Lady Stark told Lady Brienne to come because she trusts her. She wouldn’t’ve had to if you’d established a council before you left._

Brienne had reprimanded her squire, but Jon burned with shame, hearing the truth in the words.

He scrubs a hand over his face and tries not to think of all the ways that he has failed his sister.

Daenerys misinterprets the gesture and tries to soothe him: “I know you are eager to be home. We’ll be there within a moon.” But then she presses her lips to his shoulder and asks, as he knew she would, “And what of your other sister? My Lord Hand’s former wife?” Feeling him tense, she asks, “Surely you cannot hold it against him? Or her?”

“Never her,” Jon says. He cradles his scarred hand against the small of Daenerys’s soft back and remembers what she is called: the Unburnt. He is not unburnt, not unmarked; no one is, save this woman, Mother of Dragons. “Tyrion … I like Tyrion. And Sansa says that he was kind to her. That he never — _touched_ her. If he had … ”

“If he had?”

“I would have killed him.”

Her wandering hand stills, and he wishes the words back into his mouth, his throat, his foolish, impulsive brain. 

“If you had,” she says in a measured tone, “I would have burned you alive.”

He knows. He knew it then too, and it wouldn’t have stopped him. Just like it hadn’t stopped him from ringing Theon’s neck.

Daenerys asks, “You value your sister’s honor so much?”

Her voice is younger, less imperious than he is used to, and something inside him sinks. It is the voice of an intimate: a lover, a friend, a sister. Despite himself he thinks of Sansa’s cold nose pressed into his neck at Castle Black, and her smile when he’d let her drink his terrible ale, and the light of pride in her eyes when he’d been named King in the North. The color rising in her cheeks when she yelled at him, and the sweetness of her voice when she’d told him that he was a good ruler, a good man.

He clears his throat. “Aye, I do,” he says finally. “And her happiness. I don’t want her to suffer.”

Daenerys’s fingers find the wound over his heart. “We will all suffer in the wars to come, Jon Snow.”

She’s right, of course, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

Daenerys says, “My brother put no value on my honor, and certainly not on my happiness. I’m pleased that you are not like him. I’m pleased that your sister has a brother like you. Perhaps it will spare her some suffering, at least.”

“No. I haven’t spared her anything.”

Daenerys hums thoughtfully, then props herself up on her elbow so that she can look at him. “But you have tried,” she says, and he makes himself meet her eyes, which are hooded and violet and wanting. “That is something, Jon.” 

He thinks of Sansa’s stiff spine, her shuttered face, the way she melted, ever so slightly, beneath his grin. But it is too much with Daenerys in his arms, so he pushes it away, the image of sister’s blue eyes, sharper than steel. Instead he kisses Daenerys, and draws her nearer, and lets himself drown in the heat of her body.

* * *

When they land at White Harbor, Jon sends a raven to tell Sansa that his party is on its way to Winterfell. It is a short letter. He provides numbers for the beds they will have to prepare, the mouths they will have to feed. He promises that the dragons will set neither foot nor wing near Winterfell. He tells her to hold off the ire of the Northern lords as long as she can, until he can plead his case and until the queen can plead hers.

They ride North, Daenerys as resplendent on horseback as she is atop her dragon, and seemingly immune to the cold that creeps ever-deeper the closer they get to Winterfell. At night, he fucks her until he feels warm, but in the day the cold reminds him that this where he belongs. The heat of her is luxurious, indulgent, but it isn’t him. He isn’t a Stark, but he _is_ a Snow.

The dragons fly overhead, casting enormous black shadows against the frozen earth, swooping down now and again so that Daenerys might lay a hand upon them, as if to soothe them before they ascend into the sky again. “They really are your children,” Jon says to Daenerys the day their party reaches the White Knife. The surface of the river, frozen solid, gleams, but he can see the waters rushing beneath it; the worst of the cold has yet to arrive. “They’re like my brothers when they were young, tugging at their mother’s skirts and butting their heads against her stomach.”

She smiles, broad and brilliant. (He thinks of another smile: slight, and tired, and hard-won.) “Yes, Jon Snow,” she says. “I am their mother.” Her face flickers into an expression of sorrow as she gazes back up at them. “They miss Viserion. They mourn him still. As do I.”

Jon bows his head. There is nothing more to say.

As Winterfell grows nearer, however, Jon finds himself having to remind her that the dragons are not welcome there.

Tyrion mutters under his breath but Jon trusts that he understands why it must be so. Bringing the dragons to Winterfell will only ensure that the Northerners never trust Daenerys. They will see her as a threat, a conqueror like her ancestor come to intimidate them into obedience. This is something that even Daenerys understands, loath though she may be to part from her children.

It is only Jorah Mormont who objects.

“Khaleesi,” he says, with a grimacing sidelong glance at Jon. “Northerners distrust outsiders — we cannot be certain they do not mean to harm you while you do not have your dragons. I do not mean to cast aspersions on Lord Snow,” he adds hastily. Mormont has cooled on Jon since Jon had begun bedding his queen, but he is never uncivil. “He is a trustworthy man,” Mormont says, “but we know nothing of the rest of his family.”

Jon is on his feet before he realizes it. “The rest of my family are Starks. A family _your family_ has sworn fealty to. A family that honors guest right and that would never try to hurt a woman they have welcomed into their home.”

“Of course,” says Tyrion, who raises a placating hand to cut Jon’s anger off at the pass. “That is not in question.”

It’s gone unspoken that Jon’s temper has grown shorter the closer they get to Winterfell. Jon supposes Daenerys believes it’s his impatience, and Tyrion just keeps telling him to drink more. Varys watches him with a mask-like smile on his face. Davos is perhaps closest to understanding the meat of it; only yesterday he’d said, laying a reassuring hand on Jon’s shoulder, “Your people will understand that you’ve done what you must for the good of us all. If they don’t, they’re fools, and I do not believe the North is a land of fools.”

Now, Davos’s eyes urge Jon back into his seat, so Jon slumps down again, his body still coiled tight.

“Ser Jorah can be overprotective,” Varys is saying in his light way. “He has been at the queen’s side for many years and has seen her too often betrayed. But we would never presume to suggest that the Starks would be anything but the most gracious of hosts.”

“Apologize,” Daenerys says to Mormont, but she says it gently. “I know you meant Lord Snow no offense.”

Mormont gives Jon a stiff nod. “Of course. My apologies. As I said, I do not doubt that you an honorable man, my lord. I only wish to ensure that our queen comes to no harm.”

After a moment Jon nods too, and Tyrion breathes a sigh of relief. But Jon is not done. He meets Mormont’s eyes. “My brother was slaughtered by men who saw no need to honor guest right. His mother had her throat cut by such men.” Daenerys is watching him carefully now, almost as carefully as Varys, but he can’t stop himself from adding, “It is not _my_ honor that I defend, Mormont, but the Lady of Winterfell’s honor. My sister’s honor. You think she is like the men who killed her beloved brother and mother?”

“No,” Mormont says at last, with something like genuine repentance in his expression. “I have heard of your family’s hardships. You’ve been betrayed too, and I was sorry to hear it. You are right that my family has always been loyal to yours. Even if I am no longer a true Mormont, I should not speak ill of the Starks.”

Jon doesn’t bother to reply, merely nods again and rises from his seat, beating a hasty retreat from the council tent and stepping into the harsh wind. They are days from Winterfell, should conditions stay relatively clear. He is days from home.

Ghost will be there, he reminds himself. Bran will be there. Arya will be there. And Sansa — he does not know how she will feel when she sees him. But she will be there, with her hair kissed by fire and the proud tilt of her chin.

(He tries not to think of Petyr Baelish, leaning into her, smirking, with his hand on her arm and his lips in her hair and his mouth full of lies.)

“Wait!” Jon doesn’t look back, but he knows Tyrion’s voice. “Wait, bastard,” Daenerys's Hand calls again, and Jon slows until Tyrion falls into step beside him.

“Yes,” Jon says thinly, “dwarf?”

“The dragons will stay outside of Winterfell.”

“Good.”

“For now.”

Jon stops. “For now?”

“Once the Northerners trust that Daenerys is not the second coming of her father, we will bring the dragons to Winterfell. They must see her true power to understand why she is their queen. Why their king bent the knee.”

“More politics,” Jon growls. “We have a war to fight, Lannister. Daenerys will have her throne when it is over.”

There is a moment when Tyrion seems to be hesitating, but then he says, too casual, “It could be your throne too, Lord Snow.” 

When Jon turns to him, he is adjusting the clasp of his cloak, pretending he has said nothing of import, but Jon can tell that he is trying to gauge Jon’s reaction. Jon tries not let anything show on his face. 

“She would have you,” Tyrion says. Jon wonders if this is a formal offer, if Daenerys has put him up to this or if Tyrion is merely speculating. “You would be her consort, not her equal, but you are not hungry for power. I suspect it was a relief to bend the knee and unburden yourself of a kingdom.” Tyrion pauses, and then strikes a final blow: “It is possible you may not even need to live in King’s Landing, not all of the time. You might live at Winterfell.”

Jon can’t help but to imagine it. It is a pretty picture: he’d fuck his silver-haired wife in the heat of King’s Landing, he would care for her and cherish her and never betray her, but when his heart grew hollow with longing he could return to Winterfell, and the cold, and his true family.

But it is only a fantasy. 

“I am not like to live through this war,” he says. What he means is: he knows he will die. He escaped death once, impossibly. He cannot charge into the heart of death itself and slay its king and come back again unscathed. 

Tyrion doesn’t bother to disagree. “A betrothal, then.”

“A betrothal. For a wedding that will likely never happen.”

Tyrion rolls his eyes and starts patting down his cloak. Looking for his flask, most likely. He drinks more than he used to, but then again, so does Jon. “I know you have a spark of intelligence in you, Snow. A betrothal may soften the Northerners to her cause. They will see that she values the North above all her kingdoms, that she values a Northman above all her subjects.”

“ _Aye_ — or they’ll think I bent the knee because I found somewhere warm to stick my cock.”

For half a second, Tyrion’s eyes go wide.

Jon has the grace to look ashamed of himself, but he can’t pretend he didn’t say it; he certainly can’t pretend he hasn’t thought it. It’s been buzzing in his brain since he first rapped his fist on Daenerys’s door: how _stupid_ he is being, reckless with the North, reckless with Daenerys’s claim. He can barely remember what he’d been thinking that night, except that his bed had not been comfortable, and though he was at last on his way home, he was not happy. He remembers thinking of Daenerys’s lingering looks, the way her hand pressed into his when he almost died. He did not think she would turn him away. And she hadn’t.

Jon tries to soften what he’s said. “What I mean — ”

“I know what you mean,” Tyrion says, with real anger in his voice. “And you’re right. But if you keep sticking your cock in her they’re going to think that anyway.” 

He glares up at Jon for a moment, the scar across his face lending him a fierceness he had not always had, before his voice returns to its usual easy tones. “It was a bad idea from the start.” He’s found his flask at last and takes a long pull from it, gazing out across the frigid North: white and white and white forever. “I tried to tell you,” he offers with a shrug. “I tried to tell you _both_. Love is well and good for those whose names mean nothing, whose blood means nothing, but people like you don’t get that luxury. Daenerys will earn no loyalty for seducing her way into the North, and your people will see in you all of your brother’s follies.” 

Tyrion passes his flask to Jon, who fumbles it to his lips. His gloves are good; his hands should not be so unsteady. The liquor burns all the way down.

When Jon passes it back to Tyrion, the dwarf pins him in place with another grave look. “She isn’t listening to anyone but you right now. So you must tell our queen that if she wants to take control of the North, she must either give you up or take you for her husband.”

* * *

The gates of Winterfell open and Daenerys rides through first, flanked by Tyrion, Missandei, and a handful of guards. The queen is wearing black, adorned with Targaryen red at her throat and her wrists, and against it she seems whiter than ever, white and glowing and strangely inhuman, but Jon suspects it is the thinness of her cloak that is bound to draw the most comments. She ought to be half-dead from chill.

Jon and Davos ride behind, even though Davos told him he should ride in beside Daenerys. “Show them that you’re _united_.” But he cannot make himself do it, and so he follows her in, undoubtedly earning the scorn of his bannermen in the process.

He can only hope they are too distracted by Daenerys to pay him much attention.

Dismounting, he hands the reins to a skinny stableboy who bows low and calls him _Your Grace_ , which he prays Daenerys does not hear. She remains seated on her steed for the moment, looking down on the gathered crowd with such iron-steadiness and pride that it is almost as if she had ridden in on Drogon after all. Her elaborate braid coils down her back; the silver glimmer of it should remind him of snow, but he thinks instead of smoke, ash, desolation. He wonders if she would take it as a compliment.

With keen eyes, she surveys the castle and the people arrayed in the yard before her. Jon knows it is nothing like the party that had assembled to meet King Robert and Queen Cersei all those years ago. To the boy he had been, that day had been full of grandeur: the Starks in their finest, the whole household it seemed presenting themselves before the royal party. Jon had not been permitted to stand alongside his family — he’d been in the back, with Theon — but he remembers them still, how tall and proud Robb had looked, and how small Rickon had been. Bran stared in rapture at the knights. Arya was fidgeting, uncomfortable in her dress, but taken, despite herself, by the excitement of it all. Sansa was younger than he can fathom, a slim little thing in a dress that might’ve been blue or might’ve been gray, smiling so shyly at Joffrey Baratheon.

On that day it had been crisp, as Winterfell always was in his youth, a kind of beautiful freshness in the air. Now it is only cold. Everyone is wrapped in heavy furs. Beneath their feet, the snow grows muddy and brown, and white clouds of breath obscure everyone’s faces.

But when he offers Daenerys his hand to help her dismount, she accepts, and she does not look displeased. It must be enough.

His eye catches on the red flame of Sansa’s hair — it could be nothing else, he knows that shade too well — but when he turns to face her, face them all, he finds something enormous and white barrelling toward him. _Ghost_. The direwolf is even larger than he remembered, and he circles Jon, sniffing him, before jumping to put his paws on Jon’s shoulders, nearly knocking him to the ground. 

“I’ve missed you too, boy,” says Jon, kneeling so that Ghost can lick his face without either of them getting hurt. Ghost’s breath moistens his cheek, and he can feel himself smiling.

“Your beast has grown, Snow,” Tyrion laughs.

Jon climbs to his feet again to find Daenerys watching him, her eyes wide — not with fear, certainly not, but there is something like awe in her face. Ghost must be unlike any creature she has seen before: a true creature of the North, never to be found on the foreign soils of Essos that had for so long been her home.

“This is Ghost,” Jon says. At the words, the wolf’s red eyes glance up at Daenerys, an unblinking stare. She lifts a tentative hand, and even for a woman who commands dragons it is a brave thing to do, but Ghost bares his teeth at once, beginning to growl. She snatches her hand back to her side, frowning slightly.

A voice calls out — a voice he has heard in his dreams. “Ghost, to me!”

And, as if it is Sansa who’s been his companion all these years, since he was just a pup, Ghost’s head perks up and he trots happily back to her, barely sparing a backward glance for Jon. The wolf drops to his belly at Sansa’s feet, whiter than the snow and no doubt leaving fur all over the skirt of her dark gray dress.

She’s wearing gray furs too, almost the color of the winter sky. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, ablaze amidst so much darkness, so much gray. She looks like a queen. It is not the first time he’s thought it.

Davos is saying something to him, he realizes, and he snaps back to attention. Davos gives him a strange look, then nods at Daenerys, who has taken a step toward where the three Starks stand waiting, all in a row. “You should introduce Her Grace to your family.”

“Of course.” Jon gathers his wits and offers his arm to Daenerys, escorting her to stand before them. He watches Sansa watch him, watches her eyes flicker to where Daenerys’s hand rests lightly on his forearm. In desperation he turns his gaze to Arya, and his heart nearly bursts at the sight of her, looking so much like the child he’d known — but she is dressed like a boy and her goofy smile is nowhere to be seen. When he nears her, she does not launch herself into his arms as he’d half-hoped she would. She merely furrows her brow at him, her eyes hard and dark.

Beside her, Bran sits with a heavy fur around his shoulders and another draped over his lap. When Jon offers a smile, Bran makes no expression, as if he has not recognized Jon at all, but his gaze intensifies as it slides past Jon to Daenerys.

Missandei steps forward before Jon can stop her. “This is Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, Rightful Heir to the Iron Throne, Rightful Queen of the Andals and First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains.” 

He tries not to wince and shares a look with Davos. Such an introduction will not go any further with his family or the other Northerners than it had with him, and indeed he can see from the grim faces around him that Daenerys has not made a good first impression.

A pregnant moment passes as the Starks remain on their feet. They do not bend the knee to Daenerys, and so neither does anyone else. Instead, Sansa, faultlessly polite, sweeps into a curtsey — low enough to be respectful, he thinks, but surely not as low as a subject should curtsey to a queen — and nudges Arya to do the same. Arya bows instead, far too casually. The Northmen surrounding them offer similar gestures of respect, offering the dragon queen deep bows and keeping their cold eyes fixed on Jon. They do not kneel to him, thank the gods, but he can see they would like to do it — out of spite more than anything.

“Your Grace,” Sansa says. She rises in one graceful movement. “Welcome to Winterfell.”

Jon clears his throat. “Daenerys,” he says, and he doesn’t miss the way Arya’s eyebrow quirks. “Your Grace,” he amends. “This is my sister, Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell.” Wishing to give Sansa a dozen more titles, he pauses, but he can think of nothing. “And this is — Lady Arya. Lord Bran.”

Daenerys nods at his youngest siblings, a cursory acknowledgment, but it is Sansa whom she regards thoughtfully, carefully. “Lady Stark.” There is something appraising in her voice. “Your reputation precedes you.”

Sansa’s blandly cordial expression freezes on her face, and Jon’s arm tenses beneath Daenerys’s hand. It is the worst possible thing to say to a woman whose own people have called her the whore of her enemies. It is cruel, even for Daenerys.

“Is that so?” Sansa forces out, her voice a little sharp.

Jon recalls when they traveled to Bear Island and little Lyanna Mormont called her _Lady Bolton_. Sansa had stiffened, smothering her anger, lifting her chin, and she had said, _I did what I had to do to survive_.

Surely Daenerys must know something about that. Surely Daenerys knows better than to believe the slanders and lies about Sansa that have crossed all seven kingdoms.

But then Daenerys says, “It is. You see, I am surrounded by men who admire you greatly. My Lord Hand has told me of your cleverness and dignity even as a child surrounded by enemies. Theon Greyjoy says that you have been brave in the face of true horror. And it is clear that you are very precious to Jon.” Daenerys’s smile is a sudden, lovely thing. “It is an honor to meet you. I can tell you are not one to be underestimated.”

Jon is at a loss for words, and even Sansa seems startled, blinking rapidly. Her gaze meets Jon’s for a moment before it jerks away. Her cheeks have turned a pretty shade of pink that may or may not be accounted for by the chilly wind.

“I thank you, Your Grace.” She dips into another slight curtsey, and when she raises her head again her face has returned to its porcelain smoothness. “Truly. I am afraid I do not know nearly so much about you, but I will be delighted to learn more now that we are acquainted.” She glances to Daenerys’s side. “And it is very good to see you, Lord Tyrion. I trust you are well.”

Stepping forward to take her hand, Tyrion bows with a flourish and presses an unnecessary kiss to her gloved knuckles, but it does bring the slightest of smiles to her face. “It gives me great pleasure to see you again, Lady Stark. You cannot know how happy I was to learn that you found your way home.”

Something softens in Sansa’s posture, and she turns back to the queen. “Your Grace,” she says. “How would you like to get out of the cold?”

Daenerys eyes her warily before she nods. “I would like that very much, Lady Stark.”

* * *

The feast, they are told, has been scheduled for the following day, so that the queen and her retinue will have time to bathe and rest after the hard ride from White Harbor. For today, Sansa leads them into the more intimate dining chamber just off the Great Hall, where she has had a late luncheon laid out for those who would prefer to eat before they are shown to their rooms. “My brother, Robb Stark, the previous King in the North — he always wanted his meal first thing when he came home from traveling, before he even took off his muddy boots,” Sansa says, too casual. “It drove my mother mad, of course, but I think Robb had the right of it.”

Daenerys glances at Jon, her eyebrow quirking. “I was under the impression that the last King in the North was Torrhen Stark.”

“No,” Sansa says firmly, and Jon’s stomach clenches. She surely knows better than to speak of these matters, better than to antagonize Daenerys. But she continues, “It was Robb who last ruled, and Jon is his heir.” Before Daenerys can respond to that, Sansa smiles and gestures to where a few attendants stand waiting by the doorway. “Now, please sit and eat as much as you like. You need only tell the servants when you’d like to be shown to your rooms, and they will happily bring you anything else you may need there.” This, she directs at Tyrion and Varys. “Your Grace” — this to Daenerys, with a respectful nod — “if you like, I can show you to your chambers myself.”

Daenerys inclines her head, but her eyes are narrowed. “You’re too kind.”

Over the course of the next half hour, the party thins considerably. Bran excuses himself before they even sit to eat, and after a few bites and a cup of wine each, Tyrion and Varys peel off, carrying on a conversation in low tones so that their voices do not carry. Not long thereafter, Davos looks to Jon for permission to go, which Jon readily gives, though there is a part of him that fears Davos and Daenerys’s men will discuss the matter of marriage again. Despite Tyrion’s orders, Jon has not mentioned it to Daenerys, and nor has she spoken of it with him.

Missandei remains, as does Grey Worm, who stands behind his queen and does not partake of the meal. Arya sticks around too, eating sloppily and not saying a word to anyone. Sansa slips in and out of the room, still seeing to the management of the castle. She must confirm that all of the chambers have been prepared for the visitors and that the men outside the castle are safely encamped. Jon hears her ordering that hot stew and ale be brought to Daenerys’s men as soon as possible. She warns that the men may not be prepared for the cold this far North, and if they find they need heavier leathers or extra supplies, she is to be informed as soon as possible.

Daenerys makes bland small talk with Jon as they eat, complimenting him on the loveliness of Winterfell and richness of the food. She asks him to tell her about the Old Gods and the godswood, but his answers are, he knows, vague and unhelpful, and when she asks him about his childhood growing up in such a large castle, he recedes into silence. Finally, she says, “Tell me, will you, of your brother Robb Stark,” and he feels Arya’s eyes on him from down the table and Sansa’s cool gaze from across the room. 

“Another time,” he demurs.

Just as the informal meal winds to a close, Sansa once again offers to show Daenerys to her rooms. “The fire has been burning since this morning so the rooms should be quite warm, but if you do find you are cold, please let me know. I know you are southron — indeed, not even Westerosi — and I could not bear if you were uncomfortable.”

“You’re mistaken, Lady Stark,” says Daenerys. “I was born in Westeros, and find I have been very comfortable here. I am certain I will have no complaints about Winterfell.”

“Of course. Forgive me, Your Grace.”

Neither woman acknowledges Jon as they sweep from the room. Without being asked, Missandei and Grey Worm follow Daenerys, and a Valeman guard trails several steps behind Sansa (Brienne has been ordered to get a full night of rest before resuming her place at Sansa’s side). Daenerys and Sansa glide into the corridor in companionable silence.

He watches the place where they disappeared from sight and tastes nothing of his meal.

After some time — he doesn’t know how much — Arya enters his field of vision, climbing into the seat directly across the table from him. Everyone else has gone; only they remain. She has been waiting for him.

In front of her, she lays a dagger on the table, unsheathed and glinting in the candlelight. Valyrian steel. He lets out a surprised exhale.

“Why’d you do it?”

He blinks up at her, and her mouth pinches into an expression he doesn’t recognize. He is not stupid enough to ask what she means. He settles for, “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” She laughs, but it is no laugh he recognizes. It is not the laugh of the little girl he’d known in another lifetime. When she takes the dagger in hand with an ease he knows, a killer's ease, her eyes give nothing away, and she scrapes the blade along the edge of the table. “The North named you their king. And you bent the knee to a foreign invader.”

“Daenerys isn’t — ” He tugs a hand through his curls and shakes his head. “Please, Arya. I don’t want to fight. Let’s not fight.”

Her scowl only deepens.

“Little sister,” Jon pleads, exhausted, desperate. He wants to wrap her in his arms but the table is between them, so all he can do is reach out and grasp her hand over the dagger hilt, holding on with both hands even as he feels her grip tighten. This time, when her big eyes turn up into his, he sees her: his Arya, brave and brilliant and wild.

He lets her go of her hand. She sheaths the blade.

And then she all but leaps across the table in one nimble movement, shoving Jon’s plate aside and throwing her arms around his neck.

There were so many years when all he wanted was to see her smile, to know that she was all right. There’s no smile now, but he thinks that the feel of her bruising hug is enough. “Arya,” he murmurs into her hair. “I thought you were dead.” His voice breaks. “I thought … “

“I almost died,” she says, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. “But I survived.”

After everything — Ygritte and Hardhome, his Brothers’ betrayal and an arrow through Rickon’s heart, and all of things Sansa has told him about Ramsay Bolton and Joffrey Lannister and Petyr Baelish, and all of the things she has not had to tell him either — after watching a dragon die and the dead rise, Jon does not know how to hold any more suffering in his body. He is full to the brim with pain. But he will take Arya’s too, he will carry any burdens she will lay on his shoulders. And if he could take it all, if he could spare her anything, he would. Gods — she’s still just a child.

“You don’t know how happy I am that you’re all right,” Jon says. “That you’re alive. That you’re home.”

Tightening her hold on him, she says, “You too,” and then, with a powerful shove, she scrambles out of his grasp so that she stands before him, her arms folded over her chest. “But this is our home, Jon, and you’ve given it to a woman who’s never set foot here before today. Let her and her dragons burn Cersei and all of King’s Landing too for all I care, but the North isn’t hers.” Her fierce glare unsettles him. “You don’t know what it’s been like, how hard it was trying to keep these disloyal shits from throwing you over for Sansa. And now you’ve just handed it to some silver-haired stranger like it’s _nothing_.”

“Arya, that’s not what — ”

“Robb died for the North,” she says. “Or have you forgotten?”

Her smirk is an ugly, cruel thing: she has changed again, into someone unfamiliar. He wishes for the return of that child he’d known, with the missing teeth and the scraped elbows. He wishes they’d never left Winterfell, all those years ago.

Jon grits his teeth. “I will never forget Robb. Never. But I did what I had to do, I did — ”

She doesn’t let him finish, turning on her heel to storm out of the hall. Maybe it’s for the best. He doesn’t know how he means to placate her, not yet, because her accusations do not differ from those he has already lodged against himself. When he’d called Daenerys his queen, that was the moment he’d had to stop thinking of Winterfell and Sansa, Robb and Rickon. He could only think of the Night King and the killing flames of dragonfire. And he took Daenerys’s hand.

A servant steps through the doorway and clears his throat.

“What is it?” Jon asks, more roughly than he means to.

“Lord Bran requests your presence in his chambers, Your Grace. At your earliest convenience.”

Nodding, Jon pinches the bridge of his nose. Another sibling who’s undoubtedly furious with him. Coming home wasn’t supposed to be like this; seeing Arya and Bran again should’ve been a moment of joy. Like it had been with Sansa that day at Castle Black. He’d still felt half-dead before he saw her, but just a flash of her red hair, her sweet face, and he’d come alive again — for her, because of her. Surely with Arya, dear Arya, it should’ve been the same.

Except dear Arya has grown strange to him, mistrustful and sharp-edged, and he does not know how to make her forgive him. When had everything gotten so complicated?

“Very well,” he says to the servant. “Tell Bran I’ll be there within the hour.” 

He will face his brother too, and weather whatever resentment Bran might hold. He can do no less. But first he will go to his rooms and change out of his riding clothes and wash his face and try to remind himself that he is home, he is home, this is his home.

* * *

A bath has been drawn for Jon. It’s still hot: steam curls in white wisps from the water, smelling faintly of lavender, and a servant has left a wedge of soap and a linen just beside the tub. He hesitates a moment; he hadn’t ordered the bath, hadn’t wanted to burden the servants who were busy settling in Daenerys’s party and had planned to wash in the communal baths come nightfall. But when he strips out of his leathers and his sweat-sticky clothes to sink into the water, he cannot but be grateful. He exhales, lets his weary eyes drift closed. Knotted muscles begin to loosen after so many moons of strange places, strange people, all the travels and dangers he’d deemed so necessary.

As he begins to wash his hair, it occurs to him that Sansa must’ve ordered the bath.

It is precisely the sort of thing she would think of, precisely the kind of presumption she would make about his needs. Her story about Robb and his muddy boots proves well enough that she collects these little details. Since she was a girl she’s known it would fall to her to manage the affairs of a castle, to attend to the needs of her lord husband. Jon is not her husband, but still she looks after him. They haven’t exchanged a word all afternoon — they haven’t spoken since the day he rode south — and still she thinks of his comfort.

Before the day is through, he must see her. Tomorrow, the Northern lords will be expecting to meet with him, to hear his excuses and air their grievances, and he cannot do that without knowing how Sansa has ruled in his absence. He has no doubt that she has managed well, but she has given him no sign that she’s succeeded in quelling the angers and anxieties of his bannermen. He must know also how she has broached the subject of Daenerys Targaryen — or if she has even mentioned her.

And, the truth is, he wants to see her. Even if Sansa can hardly stand to be near him after all he’s done, Jon wants to drink in the sight of her, to engrave her likeness onto his heart. He’s been gone so long, worrying about her, reminded at every turn of the ways she has been hurt. Tyrion and Theon, Cersei Lannister; even Sandor Clegane, it seems, knew Sansa during her time at King’s Landing, knew the terrors she experienced there. 

(He’d come to Jon one evening on the ship to White Harbor, smelling of ale, and he asked in his gruff way, _Your sister — the pretty one — she made it home in one piece, then?_ Clegane had only barked with laughter when Jon warned him not to speak about Sansa like that.

_Like what? She is a pretty little bird, you can’t deny that_. Clegane considered for a moment. _No, from what the Tarth bitch says, the little bird is no bird at all. She’s a she-wolf like her sister. But pretty all the same._ That hadn’t made Jon feel any better, and only Daenerys’s fortuitous appearance through a cabin door stilled his hand.)

What will he tell her when he sees her? That he is sorry? That he has done the best he can? That even from across the continent he has only wanted to protect her? He can’t imagine she will thaw beneath any of those excuses.

Well, he thinks, as he scrubs the dirt from his nails, he can’t be a coward any longer. After he speaks with Bran, he will find Sansa.

Slipping beneath the water once more, he thinks of the pink of her cheeks.

* * *

Almost nothing remains of the little boy Jon had left behind so long ago.

Jon had seen Bran when he first arrived, but swaddled in heavy furs it had been less obvious how much he’s grown. Even in his chair it is clear that he’s gotten tall, perhaps near as tall as Sansa. His face has thinned too, the baby fat long gone, and Jon feels sick at the realization of how much he looks like Robb, how much he looks like Rickon. Unlike Jon’s dead brothers, however, there is nothing of the _boy_ about Bran anymore — his eyes, especially, are old and tired and have seen too much.

Bran has taken his chambers from before, but he’s done nothing to make it look like it had back then. The wall hangings have all changed; whatever had been there before, Theon or the Boltons had burned, and even after Jon and Sansa took Winterfell, they could not return it to its former state. Everything looks different, tampered with, not quite right. Like Bran, an uncanny version of a fading memory.

“Jon,” says Bran. “There is something you must know.”

Jon’s brow creases in concern and he crouches to Bran’s level. However he may have changed, he is still Jon’s brother, the only brother that remains to him. “Where have you been all these years? What’s happened to you?”

“I’ve been beyond the Wall. I’ve faced the White Walkers. I’ve become the Three-Eyed Raven.”

Yes, this is what Brienne had told him as well, and it makes no more sense in Bran’s strange adult voice than it had when lady knight had struggled to explain. 

“But what does that _mean_ , Bran?”

Bran sighs, as if tired of the conversation, but he says, “I see things. I saw you fighting them. I saw you losing. They took the dragon.”

The memory still tastes bitter, and Jon ducks his head. “You saw that? How?”

“In a vision,” Bran says. “The dragon was struck from the sky by the Night King. Now he fights with the dead.”

It seems impossible that Bran would know these things, but dragons are back and so are the White Walkers, so Jon knows better than to doubt. The Night King has claimed Viserion. He’d already feared it — he supposes he’d _known_ it — but Bran’s monotone confirmation chills him. 

It’s his fault. What madness had possessed him to travel beyond the Wall? Aye, he convinced Cersei with his captured wight, but Cersei’s armies matter little and less if the White Walkers have a full-grown dragon under their control.

He’ll have to tell Daenerys.

The thought pulls Jon up short. “What else have you seen?” he asks Bran, trying to read from the boy’s face how many of Jon’s shames he has witnessed.

But what he says is worse than anything Jon might’ve imagined.

“The Wall has fallen.”

* * *

He wants to ride North at once, but Bran says, “We don’t have time for more mistakes, Jon,” and shame stills him. He slumps against the wall, his hand scraping against stone.

They are both silent for long minutes, Bran looking off into the middle distance as if not really seeing anything, Jon staring with a clenched jaw at Bran. Tormund, Jon thinks. Edd. But he can’t even mourn them, because the Wall has fallen and there is nothing that stands between Winterfell and the dead.

“Have you seen what we should do then?” Jon asks Bran. “How we can stop them?”

Bran shakes his head. “No, but we will all have a role to play. You and Daenerys Targaryen most of all.”

It’s no more than he already knew, but he lets himself consider that if he was meant to find Daenerys, then maybe it has not all been a mistake, leaving for Dragonstone, the trip beyond the Wall, even bedding her. Maybe this is how it must be, for them to have a chance to stop the dead from destroying them. The thought does not console him as it should.

“The battle,” he says. “We’re not ready for it. We’re still waiting for the Lannister army, and I’ve no clue how many Northerners have been properly trained since I’ve been gone.”

Bran, blinking in slow, even time, considers this, or at least looks as if he’s considering Jon’s words. All he says is, “The battle is almost here.”

There is no time to lose.

Jon should find Davos, Daenerys, Tyrion. He’ll need the Vale forces too — he’ll have no choice but to speak with Baelish, or, more likely, Sansa will, though it curdles his stomach to admit it. The Wildlings … well, it is possible, surely, that some of the men manning the Wall survived. His mind turns over and over again. When will Cersei’s men arrive? _Will_ they even arrive? She is a treacherous creature, and he cannot trust her, even when the world depends upon it. And the dragons — is there anything Daenerys can do to better protect them? Will she know how to defeat Viserion, now that he is controlled by the Night King?

Should he send the girls south? They could go to the Eyrie, where they would undoubtedly be safer than at Winterfell. Unless Littlefinger demands to join them — and he would. Besides, he cannot imagine what he could say to make Sansa ever step foot outside of Winterfell. She’s sworn she will never leave home again.

“There is more,” Bran says, and Jon jerks out of his racing thoughts. “Another matter we must discuss.”

“About the White Walkers? The Night King?”

“No.”

“The war?”

“No.”

Jon's voice is sharp with impatience. “What, then?”

Bran regards him for a moment, his mouth bent into a slight frown, the heavy slant of his eyebrows devoid of any emotion. But somehow Jon knows. He knows exactly what Bran is going to say.

“Your mother.”

Jon drags his feet to a chair by the fire and drops into it. “My mother?”

Bran nods.

His mother. Of course he wants to know, but the timing seems far from ideal. Jon must plan a war now; he cannot think about a mother he’s never known, a mother who may very well be alive somewhere and whom he cannot possibly think to meet, not now, and if she is dead, then what is the point of it, except, he supposes, to the know the truth, to know what Father had said he would tell Jon, the next time they spoke. Before Father was murdered. Before everything went to shit.

But he cannot leave it unburied, now that the answer is before him. “Tell me,” says Jon.

A moment of thoughtful silence from Bran and then he says, “Ask a servant to fetch Lord Tarly.”

They are the last words Jon expects to hear, and he takes a few beats to recover himself. “Lord Tarly?” Not Randall Tarly, nor his heir Dickon. They are dead. But that would mean ...

“Samwell Tarly,” says Bran. “He arrived from Oldtown not long ago.”

“Sam? And he — he knows who my mother is?”

Bran doesn’t respond, so Jon springs out of his seat to send someone to fetch his dear friend. Sam arrives at Bran’s door only moments later, ruddy-cheeked and a little winded, and when he sees Jon, his eyes go comically wide and he throws his arms around Jon.

“They said you were riding in today, but I had to stay with Little Sam, he’s been a bit ill, nothing to worry about but Lady Stark needed Gilly this morning — Gilly’s her handmaid now, you know — and I thought I’d best keep out of the way of everything. Your sister’s been planning for days and days for Daenerys Targaryen’s arrival, and I thought — ”

Jon cuts him off, grinning. “But you’re here, Sam. What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you, I came — ” His face falls and he exchanges an unreadable look with Bran. “Is it true, Jon, what they say? Did our Brothers really … ?”

Jon, stepping back, clears his throat. “Aye.”

“And Stannis’s Red Witch … ”

“Brought me back. I don’t know how.”

Sam looks him over, as if checking that he is the same Jon he’d left at Castle Black. Jon can’t blame him. Sometimes even he doubts that he is the same man he was before he died. 

But then Sam says, “Well, if anyone would come back from the dead, I suppose it’d be you.” He cracks a smile. “You always did have the strangest luck.”

“Shit luck, I call it,” says Jon.

“You’re alive,” Sam says. “You’ve got your brother back, your sisters. Could be worse.” He sobers. “I am told your dragon queen burnt my family alive.”

Word travels fast, Jon thinks, but of course the Lannister forces would send a raven to Winterfell to warn of Daenerys’s brutality. They wanted the North to pledge themselves to Cersei, even if only to save themselves from Daenerys Targaryen and her strange and terrible dragons.

“Sam … I’m … ”

“It’s all right, Jon. Well, no, it’s not all right.” There’s no anger in his voice, but there is a steel there that Jon is not accustomed to. “I know my father wasn’t a good man, but … well. And Dickon, my mother loved him more than anything. She’s inconsolable.” He glances behind Jon again, toward where Bran sits. “But Bran’s told me how you need her to fight the White Walkers, and I know that matters more than anything else right now. I know you don’t have a choice.”

Jon thinks of Daenerys’s warm, naked flesh spread out beneath him. This woman who’d burned men alive, even when he’d warned her not to, even when her Hand had begged her not to. She is a good woman, isn’t she? Yes. It’s only that there’s darkness in her; it is in him too. But he does not know if her darkness haunts her, the way his haunts him.

He forces his thoughts from Daenerys. “How — how long have you been here?”

“We arrived a few weeks ago.”

“You and Gilly?”

“And Little Sam. Lady Stark has asked me to assist Maester Wolkan with some of the preparations for winter, and she’s taken Gilly on. She’s a kind lady, your sister. I don't think you ever talked about her, but I like her. She's been very welcoming.”

Jon has missed Sam’s smile, the wide, kind shape of his face. That he likes Sansa is no surprise, and that Sansa likes him — that makes sense too. They are both smarter than Jon has ever been, their souls made of something purer.

Then Sam says, “And Gilly says she’s quite the lady, never lets anyone get the better of her. Even with all that business with Lord Baelish … ”

Jon’s heart drops through his guts. “Lord Baelish?” He grips Sam’s arm, too tight. “What happened? Did he hurt Sansa?”

It’s Bran who answers. “Petyr Baelish is no longer a concern.” He sounds bored. “He was tried, convicted, and executed for his crimes against the realm and our family.”

“Executed?”

“Sansa gave the order. Arya saw it done.”

The hollowness inside of Jon only grows. The war, the dead, the fate of humanity — does it matter if Sansa's been hurt? He left her unprotected, and it had fallen on Arya, still a young girl, to defend her. He wants to fall at their feet and beg forgiveness.

But Bran doesn’t seem to want to talk about Petyr Baelish anymore, or even about Jon’s failings. His face, a man’s face, is serious and intense. He says, “We must talk about your mother, Jon. It will change things.”

So Jon nods, steeling himself against his regret and his fears, and dons his warrior’s mask once more. He must be strong, he cannot let himself be weak. Not now. Not yet.

“Who is she?”

Bran looks to Sam, who exhales a little nervous laugh. “This may be hard to believe, at first,” says Sam. “You — ” His brow furrows. “I don’t know how to begin.”

“Tell me this, Jon,” says Bran. “What do you remember Father saying about his sister Lyanna?”

* * *

He goes to his room and bars the door. He pours himself a tankard of lukewarm ale. The fire is already lit, the flames leaping, dancing, and for a long time he watches the kindling crackle and the ash curl in black heaps beneath the grate. His grandfather, the mad king, had watched fires like this one consume people, had listened to them scream as their flesh melted from their bones. He realizes that his grandfather, the mad king, had burned his other grandfather alive.

And Daenerys — 

He feels bile rise in his throat.

He knows that it is unusual, but not unheard of, for an aunt to bed a nephew, an uncle to wed a niece. Such arrangements have happened in every great family, even if they are considered somewhat less favorable these days. It should not turn his stomach as it does.

It is only that he was drawn to her, to her silver hair and violet eyes, her dragons too, not knowing who she truly was to him. It feels like a confirmation of his Targaryen blood, his lust confused and misdirected toward his kin.

And to think — he can think it now, can’t he, the thought he never allowed himself, no matter how blue her eyes, no matter how lovely her red hair shining in the firelight and the graceful curve of her neck and the way she makes him laugh as no one else can do. He ran south for duty, for honor, for dragonglass and allies and an army to fight the dead, but he’d run for fear as well. Fear of himself, fear of her. He couldn’t trust his heart. He needed space, and impossible tasks, and some other woman to make him forget.

He wipes ale from his mouth with the back of his hand and scrubs the tears from his eyes with the rough heel of his palm. Of course he is a Targaryen. Who else but a Targaryen would love a sister who is not his sister and lust for a stranger who is his aunt? For all he had been raised a Stark, it is true what they say: blood will tell.

Bran and Sam say that he is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Jon laughs hollowly. Maybe Daenerys will kill him after all.

He keeps drinking. He does not sleep. The fire burns itself out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon realizes that his parentage might mean doom for his alliance with Daenerys, and Sansa tries to give him advice without wanting to kill him.

A thousand years ago, when Jon was still a boy, his days were made of movement. It was summer then, and he and Robb liked nothing better than to slip Maester Luwin’s watch and roam the grounds of Winterfell, playing knights in the Godswood and sparring with sticks they’d found on the ground. Eventually, he learned to shoot, and to ride, and he held steel in his hands for the first time. That was his favorite. Beneath the cold eyes of Catelyn Stark or the sound of Theon’s goading laughter, beneath the constant awareness that he was the shame of Winterfell, he knew _this_ , at least, was right — his sword and his strength, and one day he would be a Brother of the Night’s Watch and it would not matter that he was a bastard. Only that he was good. Only that he could fight.

What a fool he’d been.

Now, the weight of a sword in his hands brings him no pleasure. He can hardly a remember a time when he was not fighting and killing and bleeding, losing everyone and everything. He died, and even that didn’t end the fight.

And now he’s lost himself too, the man he thought he was: Jon Snow never existed, not really. He could almost laugh. All he ever wanted was to be a Stark, to overcome his baseborn beginnings and grow into a man his father would be proud of, proud enough to give him his name — but now he envies that bastard boy he had been, hands clean, unburdened by the blood of the Targaryens, unburdened by the gift or curse of a second life. He was once the son of a good man, and far better that than the heir of a selfish prince who’d taken a girl of six-and-ten for his wife when he’d tired of the family he already had.

 _They loved each other_ , Bran had said, but did it truly matter? Rhaegar had torn a kingdom apart for that love. Lyanna — his _mother_ — had died for it. 

At daybreak, when the sky tints even grayer than usual and pale light begins to spill across the horizon, Jon splashes cold water on his face, hoping it will ward away the ache in his head. He avoids his reflection in the mirror. He does not want to see Ned Stark there; he does not want to look for Lyanna. It's not the time. The wars have not stopped for Jon’s heartbreak, and the Wall has not risen again. He still has not secured Daenerys Targaryen’s aid in the fight to come, or his people’s cooperation, and now — now it is more complicated than ever.

He can only see one way through it, and it is a path he does not want to take.

The Godswood has always been a place of solace, the spot beneath the heart tree where his father sat and prayed and thought. Jon does not pray, not anymore, but ale and anger have not helped him to understand. Maybe, he thinks, pulling on his boots and his cloak and making his way out of the castle, maybe at least the cold will clear his head.

When he traveled south, the warmth surprised him. It was even pleasant, at first, but all the sweating on Dragonstone and sweltering in King’s Landing, it only served to make him miss home. He missed the way the air was sharp and clean in his lungs. The glimmer of snow beneath moonlight. And all the space — wide and wild lands, uncrowded, even untouched.

If he could, he would live out the rest of his days here in Winterfell, but that is only the dream of a boy. He must be a man.

Sitting at the roots of the weirwood, Jon can almost see Ned Stark in this very place, silently sharpening Ice, watching the water ripple across the pond in front of him. Was this how his father made peace with his own bloodied hands? Was this how he learned to live with his lies? Jon pulls Longclaw from its scabbard and lays it across his knees. He hadn’t thought to bring a whetstone, so instead he just tilts the blade to catch the reflection of blood red leaves and white branches. The pond has frozen over, its surface cloudy white.

Jon always wanted to be like his father, brave and good and honorable, and he has tried, he has tried so hard, but it’s not possible, is it? Over and over Jon has been forced to make the choice that isn’t brave, or good, or honorable; over and over Jon has been made to suffer when he tries to do what is right, or others have been made to suffer for it.

“Father,” he murmurs, closing his eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

But Eddard Stark is not his father, and he isn’t going to answer.

Taking a deep breath, Jon hears snow crunching nearby -- a familiar sound, a heavy weight padding across the ice. He almost allows himself a smile. At least Ghost has not entirely forsaken him; at least the wolf in him still calls to Ghost as it always has. 

(Would the dragon in him call to one of Daenerys’s dragons? But that is a dangerous and impossible thought. He pushes it down.)

“I was wondering where you’ve been,” Jon starts to say as he slides Longclaw back into its scabbard, but as he looks up, the words die in his throat.

Trailing behind Ghost is Sansa, her face unreadable as she sees Jon sitting in her father’s place. 

Sansa has dressed in her armor of wool and fur, her hair braided away from her face. An image comes to his mind unbidden — a flash of her at her dressing table with her hair undone, long and loose across her bare shoulders as some maid, Gilly he supposes, runs a brush through it.

(He pushes that thought down too.)

“Ghost wouldn’t let me alone until I came with him,” she says.

“Oh.” Uneasy, he looks from Sansa to Ghost and back again and climbs to his feet. “Is something wrong?”

Her eyes flick over him, his messy hair and the dark circles on his face that no doubt betray his exhaustion, but all she says is, “We need to talk.”

For half a breath, Jon considers denying her. He could. He could tell her that he’s too tired, or that he will call on her when he wishes to speak with her. He can tell her has other business to attend to this morning. She is the Lady of Winterfell, certainly, but he is still Warden of the North. He has the authority to command her.

Except, of course, he has no such thing. He never has. From the time when they were but children, Sansa held Jon in her power: because she was the trueborn daughter of Winterfell, beloved, beautiful, untouchable, her mother’s child through and through; because she was always destined to be a lady, perhaps even a queen, and he was only her bastard half-brother; because, even if it is true that he is a Targaryen prince, even if it is true that he could claim the Iron Throne, with or without Daenerys Targaryen, he loves Sansa and it has made him weak to her, weak for her.

“You look pale,” he says. “Are you too cold? We can talk inside.”

She doesn’t reply, merely regards him behind the mask of indifference that she dons so well. For a time she had been willing to let the mask fall for him, and he could tell her mood by the light in her eyes and the bend of her lips, but he cannot be surprised that this too has changed.

“I’m fine,” she says at last. “I thought you would come speak to me last night.”

Jon winces. Of course. “I meant to, but — ”

“I even sent someone to your door, to ask if you’d prefer I came to you. But he says that you didn’t answer.”

Had there been a knock at his door last night? He can’t remember now — too distracted, too deep in his cups. He remembers worrying that Sam would seek him out and try to comfort him. He remembers worrying that Daenerys might try to warm his bed. If anyone came to his door, Jon certainly ignored them.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s my fault,” she says. “I suppose I should’ve realized you’d be entertaining our guests.” 

He scowls. “What do you mean?”

She worries the loose end of her braid between her gloved fingers. “It’s none of my business,” she tells him, inexplicably. “But you bending the knee, that _is_ my business. Why didn’t you consult me? Why — ?” Her throat bobs as she swallows the waver in her voice, and her hand drops to her side. “Why did you do it?”

He looks at her; he drinks his fill of her. The copper weave of her hair, the hard line of her jaw, clenched in anger. Though Sansa does indeed look very pale, the wind has brought splotches of bright red to her cheeks. The dark fur at the collar of her cloak brushes against her bare throat, which is cream-colored and captivating. Gods, he is damned. 

It was a mistake to come home. Seeing her again — a mistake. He was strong enough to leave once, but he doesn’t know how he’ll do it again.

She skewers him with a bright blue glance. “Tell me, Jon.”

He doesn’t bother to lie.

“We need Daenerys. I _swear_ to you, we’re, we’re fucked without her, we are. It was obvious she’d show us no loyalty if we showed her none.”

“And this should endear her to us?”

“That doesn’t matter. If you like her or not, it doesn’t matter. The dead are coming — I’ve seen ‘em. Beating ‘em is the most important thing. And beyond the Wall, we would’ve been slaughtered if it weren’t for her dragons. They’re the only thing that made a difference.”

Sansa seems to be thinking this over. “And after the war? I know you say all that matters if beating the White Walkers, but then what? We must still survive whatever remains of winter. We must still keep the North safe. And you cannot truly believe that the North will accept a Targaryen for their ruler when they have chosen a Stark.”

Whatever future remains to Westeros after the war, Jon will not be here to see it. Daenerys may not survive, either. These pointless political games will mean nothing in the Long Night.

But that’s not what Sansa wants to hear.

“If Daenerys saves us,” Jon says, “then they’ll see that she’s a worthy queen. If she doesn’t — it won’t matter anyway.” He flexes his hands, feeling the dry skin around his knuckles crack with blood. “Besides,” Jon croaks, “I’m not a Stark.”

Before, he would’ve rejoiced in her careless scoff. “You are Ned Stark’s son,” she says. “You’re a Stark to anyone who counts. And as a Stark, you cannot simply allow a foreign conqueror to ride in on her dragon and steal our home.”

“She’s not — ” 

“Daenerys Targaryen has done nothing to prove her worth to us. All she has done is bring to our walls the very beasts that Aegon the Conqueror used to subjugate our people. Jon … I cannot, the North cannot, abide another tyrant.”

“She’s not a _tyrant_ ,” he says, harsher than he means to, and her face hardens.

“I see. And will you tell me she’s not a conqueror either?”

The headache Jon has been fighting off throbs at the back of his skull. He needs sleep. He needs food. He needs his mind to stop swimming every time he looks at Sansa, every time he thinks of her. He groans. Why are they always arguing? He doesn’t want to argue, he really doesn’t, but she is looking at him now with something in her eyes — not indifference, but something sharp and dangerous. Something that tells him not to forget that she is a wolf too.

“I know that Daenerys is a stranger to you,” he tries to explain more gently. “And I won’t pretend she’s not hungry for power. But she’s trying to do what she thinks is best. She’s fought and suffered so that she can — ”

Sansa actually rolls her eyes. “ _I_ have fought and suffered. So have you. There’s nothing special to it. Even Cersei has fought and has suffered, in her time. That is no claim of just rule.”

He remembers Missandei’s praise of Daenerys, how she swore she was a leader who protected her people and gave them the freedom to choose her. “She wants to do good, Sansa. She wants to serve everyone, rich and poor, noble or not. She doesn’t want it to be the same as it’s been.”

“Yet she burned supply lines to feed smallfolk in King’s Landing, and she murdered the family of a man I understood to be your best friend.” She raises her eyebrows, a clear challenge to contradict her, but he can’t. “Yes,” she continues, “we heard about that. One of Littlefinger’s spies sent word along. He tried to convince me that I’d lost you to her, that she would kill you any moment if she hadn’t already. I was so afraid she would kill you.”

“Sansa … ” 

“But you wrote, eventually. You were alive. And I knew you would realize if you hadn’t already that Daenerys Targaryen cannot be trusted, not for all the dragonglass in the world. I was certain you would never let a woman like that touch ourhome. Our people.” 

She fixes her gaze on the spot where he’d been sitting. Was she imagining Ned Stark there too? 

“I should’ve known she — ” But she cuts herself off so abruptly it’s as if she’s bitten down on her own tongue. “It doesn’t matter how she did it,” she says, shaking her head. “She won.”

The morning’s light paints a fuzzy halo around her, softens all her edges so that she is like a dream, like something he might be allowed to want, but then she straightens her shoulders and meets his eyes, and she is Sansa again, solid and radiant and all he longs to touch. It doesn’t matter if she’s his sister or his cousin; all he knows is that she is the only thing that’s felt real since he died.

“I know it’s of no use to fight about this. What’s done is done,” she says, and it feels less like forgiveness than resignation. “You are the king, and you made the decision to bend the knee to her. Our people will not like it, but I have done what I can with them. They don’t yet know that you’ve declared yourself her subject, but I’ve told them that you’ve agreed to an alliance and I’ve tried to make it seem like a reasonable course of action. As for your dragon queen, I made it clear to them that if you did become allies, then she surely must be worthy, and so we must not naively believe wild rumors from the south. Not until Jon returned to tell us the truth.” 

She offers him a wan smile. “It is up to you and Daenerys to decide what truth that will be.”

He releases a breath, not as steady as he’d like it to be, and slumps back onto the stone where he'd been sitting. Ghost joins him, snuffling the ground for a moment before dropping to lie at Jon's feet. “You didn’t have to do that,” Jon tells her.

“Don’t be naive, of course I did. What else was there to do?”

Jon swallows hard. “You could rule.” It comes out so fast it’s like a single word, so he keeps talking: “You could take the crown. You deserve it. You know I never wanted it.”

Whatever he expects, it is not this: she takes two swift steps backwards, nearly stumbling over a root, keen hurt writ plainly across her features. “Why would you say that? Who told you to — ?” Her face goes blank again, smooth and placid, and she lifts her chin. He knows that trick. “I won’t steal your throne, Jon. I’m not Littlefinger’s pawn anymore. I thought you knew that.”

_Well done, Snow._

“I do. ‘Course I do. I didn’t mean … only, it should’ve been you. From the beginning.” She’s still eyeing him coldly, so he says, “You’re the one who knows how to rule. You’re Ned Stark’s trueborn daughter. It should’ve been you. If there weren’t a war, it would’ve been you.”

She’s less imperious now, but her tone is still firm. “There _is_ a war. And you are the king — or you were. It’s pointless and dangerous to pretend otherwise. It’s a fantasy. And neither us can waste our time on fairy tales anymore.” 

Everyone says that she looks like Lady Catelyn, and she does, yes, sometimes so much it frightens him, but Jon can see Ned Stark in her too, plain as day, and Robb, and a lineage of winter kings and queens reaching as far back as history will go. In a just world, she would rule. In a just world, she would live the fairy tales that she once loved so well.

She tells him, “I will not do what they all expected me to do. I will not be the ambitious and disloyal creature Petyr Baelish hoped to make me.”

He has barely begun to make sense of her words when she turns as if to leave. No, he thinks. Not yet. “Wait! Please wait.” And as he climbs unsteadily to his feet, Ghost crosses to her in two bounding leaps, moving to block her path.

Sansa’s glare could wither all of Highgarden. “Ghost will move if I tell him to. You can’t trap me here.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t — I didn’t mean for him to do that. I swear I didn’t. Ghost, come away.” Ghost does as he says, though he throws Jon an annoyed look, and Jon says roughly, “You can go. You can always go. I wouldn’t … ”

But she hesitates.

Jon hasn’t seen Sansa in moons and moons, hasn’t touched her, hasn’t inhaled her scent, sweet and bright like roses. He hasn’t spoken with her, the thing he loves most all, to sit in silence at her side and hear her warm voice tell him what she did that day, and how the new castle staff are coming along, and how some of the young girls in the wildling camp had asked to touch her hair. She would tell him about her meetings with the kitchen-workers about winter rations, and her visits to Wintertown when she brought what blankets and warm clothes could be spared. She would talk, sometimes, of the past, but only in bits and pieces that he held close and stitched together in the hopes he could understand her, and perhaps even comfort her, one day.

But Jon is home and they have not _talked_ , they have only argued. Why must they _always_ argue? Even that first night he got her back, as they warmed themselves at the fire and shared the Night Watch’s foul ale, they had argued. 

Yet when he looks back on that night, he does not know when he has ever been so happy.

“What do you want from me, Jon?”

“I want to talk,” he says truthfully. Then, “There’s something else we have to talk about.”

Her voice is cautious. “What is it?”

 _I am not a Stark_. _You are Eddard Stark’s true heir, and Winterfell belongs to you. It always has. It always should’ve._

_Bran told me who my mother is. Bran told me who I am._

But when he opens his mouth, what comes out is, “What happened to Petyr Baelish?”

* * *

Her silence stretches on for a long time before she'll look at him. “Arya cut his throat,” she says eventually. “On my orders.”

It’s more than he expected; she could’ve just walked away. Even before he went south, when she still trusted him, she hardly discussed Baelish with him. The man was a strange secret she kept to herself, and some small part of him has always feared that she cared for the man. She said she did not trust him, she said he had betrayed her, and yet — she kept him at her side, even after all he’d done. She let him touch her arm familiarly, let him call her _Sansa_ when everyone else, everyone else but Jon, called her Lady Stark. If she loathed him, why didn’t she send him away? Why didn’t she ask Jon to put a sword through his belly?

But Jon knows these are only the irrational thoughts of a jealous man. He is a fool but he’s not completely stupid. She once mentioned that if she sent Baelish away, she suspected he would try to extract from her some payment for his help winning Winterfell back to the Starks. Jon does not like to imagine what price that man would demand. More than that, Sansa kept Baelish close for Jon’s sake, because he needs the Vale’s army to win the war and he cannot risk losing them.

Sansa, as if reading his mind, says, “Don’t worry. I haven’t jeopardized your war.” With a grimace, she lifts her skirts and seats herself on another cold slab of stone near his own. “Lord Royce is now the Lord Regent of the Vale, and though he has been cautious about involving the Vale in outside matters, he knows that they are well in the thick of it now. He understands the importance of the wars to come, and I’ve entrusted him with a letter to my cousin Robin explaining matters.”

“Thank you,” he says, but this isn’t what Jon cares about — at least not now. Yesterday he’d worried over how to keep Baelish’s support, and in the hours to come, when he draws up battle plans, he will be glad that the knights of Vale have remained pledged to his cause. Right now, however, he only wants to know if Littlefinger hurt her.

“Why did you execute him?”

Sansa stares across the gleaming surface of the frozen pond. “You don’t need to know all about that.”

Cautiously, he leans a little closer. “I do.”

“Then,” she says, “perhaps it is that I don’t want to talk about it.”

He leans back and grinds his teeth together. He should accept her words, respect her silence as he has done so many times before, but he can’t let it lie. Not this. Not if he could’ve prevented it.

“If he hurt you,” Jon begins, but the brittle smile Sansa turns on him makes him swallow the rest of the sentence.

“Yes, Jon? If he hurt me … what will you do? You can't change things, and playing the protective big brother now can only serve as a way to punish yourself, or to make yourself feel better. He’s already dead.” She stands abruptly and, to his great surprise, complains, “My ass is freezing and I don’t want to have this conversation.”

He catches a hand on her sleeve, light enough that she could shake it off if she wanted to. “I should’ve been here.” 

“Maybe,” she says quietly. “But you weren’t, and I was. And so was he.” 

He grips her sleeve tighter. “I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

She pulls out of his grasp and clenches her hands at her sides. She won’t meet his eyes. “You want to know what happened? Petyr didn’t touch me. He said that he loved me. Before he died, he begged on his knees for me to spare him. The final word he ever spoke was my name.” She blinks at him. “Would you judge me?”

“Never. He deserved to die for what he did to you.”

Sansa lifts a hand to her white throat, worrying the skin above her collar and sending a sharp pang through his chest. She’s still so young. He forgets, sometimes, that in another world she might still have the heart of a child, full of songs and stories. In another world, so might he.

“All you need to know about Petyr Baelish is that he was poison. He tried to make Arya think — but it doesn’t matter.” She’s turned her head to stare at the face of the heart tree again, her thoughts somewhere far away, and he wants to shake her out of it but he’s afraid to touch her again. He’s afraid she will hate him if he tries. “He’s responsible for Father … for all of it. The war itself. He deserved a death worse than the one Arya gave him, but at least I know he can never hurt us again.” With steel in her voice, she adds, “I protect my family too.”

Jon’s heart contracts in his chest.

All at once Jon can see her these past moons, haunting the halls of Winterfell, the lady of the castle and nobody’s friend; he can see her trying to laugh with Bran as she once had, and Bran only staring at her with those deep, old eyes that cannot belong to his baby brother; he can see her struggling to understand Arya just as she did all those years ago, and Arya perhaps just as incapable of understanding her; he can see Petyr Baelish sliding like a shadow beside her, warning her that she still isn’t safe, that her family will betray her, that Jon may never come back to her, telling her every terrible thing he hears from the south, true or false, in order to crush her hopes for Jon’s return. Did she think Jon would leave her alone forever?

When the despair and the homesickness and the sorrow ate at him, Jon took comfort in Daenerys. Was there anywhere for Sansa to find comfort?

She is as tired as he is, he realizes. As tired, and as lonely.

“Sansa.” Her eyes flicker down, the color of his dreams. “Sansa.” Everything else he might say has vanished: her name is a wish. “Sansa.” It is a question. 

He stands up and reaches out.

For one awful moment, there is nothing but emptiness in her face, as hollowed out as any wight — and then, like a crack splintering across a frozen lake, her mask shatters. She cries his name. She falls into his arms.

Immediately, the warmth and the scent of her envelop him, sunlight after so much rain, but before he can even breathe her in, he feels her tense, her hands clenching into fists against his back.

Of course, he chides himself. Of course her anger hasn’t abated. It breaks his heart, but he knows that touching her for even a moment is a privilege he doesn’t deserve.

He doesn’t get the chance to let her go, however, because as soon as he loosens his grip, her hands open across his shoulder blades and pull him forward, crushing him against her so hard they both almost tumble over. She laughs, a huff of breath against his neck that is hotter than dragonfire.

“You were gone too long,” she whispers, so low he hardly catches it.

“I missed you,” he swears.

She falls silent. Then, in a raw voice has not heard since the days before they took Winterfell, she asks, “Then why didn’t you come home?”

He wants to say _I couldn’t, I needed Daenerys and her dragons, I needed Cersei’s men, I needed to stop the end of the world_ , but the words catch in his throat. What good would they do her? He’d needed a thousand things, but she had needed _him_. 

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, and presses a kiss to her temple. “I’m sorry, Sansa. I’m so sorry.”

For a long time, she lets him hold her like that, lets him kiss her hair and her forehead and the angle of her cheekbone, and it would be so sweet to tilt her chin up and kiss her mouth too, just once, but he doesn’t let himself do it. This has to be enough. Her hands clinging to the back of his neck, his nose pressed into the softness of her hair. He has already edged too close to a line he cannot cross. It is already more than he ever should’ve been given, and when her lips brush his jaw, not a kiss exactly, surely only an accident, fire floods through his veins.

A voice calls out: “Lord Snow!” 

They spring apart.

Tyrion Lannister approaches from the opposite side of the Godswood, grinning gaily. “And Lady Stark, how fortuitous. I remember how charming this place was the last time I was here, and I couldn’t resist another look at it, especially now with the snow.” It seems impossible that Tyrion is as oblivious as he seems to Jon’s flushed cheeks and racing heart, but short of beating the man bloody, Jon doesn’t know what he can do about it. Pleasantly, he continues, “Oh, I hope I’m not interrupting your prayers. I just thought I spotted you through the trees and I wanted to ask you — both of you — if you’d like to break your fast with me this morning.”

“I — ” Jon bites the inside of his mouth. He can’t just say he doesn’t want to. He can’t say that he won’t risk running into Daenerys just yet.

“Please, Lord Tyrion, do accept our apologies,” says Sansa, collected again, as if she had never been anything else, save a few flyaway hairs. The flush in her cheeks is only from the cold. “My brother and I have much to discuss before our meeting with our bannermen today.”

“Of course.” Tyrion bows his head. “That is an important meeting indeed.”

A beat. “You should be there," Sansa says. She lays a hand on Jon's forearm to keep him from speaking. "At the meeting. As Daenerys’s representative.”

Tyrion tilts his head. “Are you sure about that?”

“Quite sure. Now we really must go. I will send word of the meeting. We will see you there.”

They walk quickly toward the castle, Ghost at their heels. Every time Jon tries to speak, she shushes him, until, far from the Godswood, she comes to a halt and fixes him with a stern look. “What?”

“Why did you do that?” he demands.

She keeps her voice low. “Because Daenerys will send a spy anyway. Better to know who the spy is.”

Would Daenerys send a spy? She trusts Jon. Tyrion himself said that it seems as if she _only_ trusts Jon of late. Surely she would trust him to report back to her about the meeting.

Then again, she keeps Lord Varys at her side, and if she didn’t send a spy, he would. Besides, he hasn't heeded Sansa's instincts so far and where has it left him?

"All right," he agrees. "I'm, uh, I’m going to eat in my rooms. Would you join me?”

She considers for what feels like years, her expression troubled and uncertain, before she bows her head in acquiescence. “I will,” she says, but her voice is firmer, it is her Lady of Winterfell voice, and she keeps her distance. “I meant what I said. We must discuss how you will address our bannermen. You must tell it all today, everything about Daenerys, before the feast. It cannot wait any longer. These secrets will not keep.”

“I know.” He wants to brush back the strand of hair that’s come loose from her braid, but he keeps his hand at his side and remembers the path that lies before him. The only path to keep them all safe. “I know.”

* * *

When Jon jolts awake in his chair, the sun has risen high in the sky, and Sansa is gone. Someone has cleared the food away, and the low fire burning in the hearth beside Jon has left the room comfortably warm, but it takes Jon far longer than it should to piece together what any of it means.

He curses himself for falling asleep while she was still here. He can’t even remember how it happened, only that after they talked about how they would handle the lords, Sansa had moved on to pleasanter topics: the completion of the repairs on the glass gardens, the way Ghost’s nose twitched in his sleep, the remarkable sight of Arya and Brienne training in the yard. Her voice, so familiar and so missed, flowed like blood through his body, until — 

Until now. He shakes himself from his stupor and tries to guess at the time. Midday, perhaps a bit earlier. The clash of steel in the yard means that some of the soldiers are still training, and if his own stomach is anything to go by, luncheon would not go amiss anytime soon.

By this time Sansa will have her hands full with the last of the feast preparations — yet another thing he would never know how to do without her — while Daenerys and her retinue will be strategizing how the queen should address her new subjects for the first time. Tyrion and Varys will be considering the possible reactions the North may have to Daenerys’s claim, and Daenerys will certainly want Jon’s advice. But he cannot give it, not yet.

One thing at a time. He must get dressed. 

He must speak with Davos.

It’s as he’s crossing to his wardrobe that he spots the items that have been left atop his bed. A newly-sewn pair of breeches, the material heavy and warm. A dark gray shirt, very fine, with an intricate border of white wolves embroidered at the collar and along the hem. Beautiful black leathers, pressed with the sigil of House Stark.

So: she had not given up hope of his return entirely.

She means for him to wear this tonight, beneath the cloak she made for him before they even left Castle Black. She means to make it clear to everybody present that even if he has bent the knee to a Targaryen, Jon is a Stark, loyal to his family and his people. Sansa would have Daenerys look at him and know that he is the son of Lord Eddard Stark; that he will always have been King in the North.

But he is not Eddard Stark's son, and he is a Targaryen as much as anything else, and he left that cloak she worked so hard on at the damn Wall. And now, like Edd and Tormund, it must be buried beneath the ice. His stomach turns.

He changes quickly into an old set of clothes and goes in search of Davos. If nothing else, he can trust Davos to tell him the truth. He can trust him to tell him how fucked he really is.

* * *

“Well, lad. You’re fucked.”

Jon drops his head into his hands. “I thought so.”

“It’s a bad business, fathers lying to their sons. But you’ve got the right of it. You need to see your way out of this mess and soon, or it won’t just be you that’s fucked but all of us. Your sister and Daenerys Targaryen included.”

“I know.”

The warm weight of Davos’s hand on his shoulder steadies him. The last time Jon saw his father, he’d clapped him on the shoulder like this and sworn to tell him about his mother the next time they saw each other. It is a memory that’s grown more and more bittersweet through the years, and never more bitter than today.

Davos’s gruff voice is genuine when he says, “I’m sorry, Jon. I really am.”

* * *

As expected, no one is happy with Jon for bringing Daenerys to Winterfell, and the moment he utters the words _I’ve bent the knee_ , half the bannermen start shouting over him and the rest shout at each other. Only little Lyanna Mormont stays silent, her displeasure so apparent that it stings far more than the furious words of grown men.

“Targaryens are mad!”

“Worse than the Lannisters!”

“She’ll burn you the same as her father burned your uncle!”

“I won’t kneel to some foreign whore!”

Jon’s frustration must show, because Davos gives him a significant look, and he makes himself take a few breaths. He must be rational now. He must not give them one more reason to doubt him.

Sansa sits in her usual spot at his side, only the slight wrinkle of her brow betraying any sense of apprehension. Arya refused to be present, or so Sansa told him, but Bran has come and is seated beside Sansa, quiet and composed, untroubled by the furious bannermen or Tyrion Lannister’s conspicuous presence at the back of the hall or even the roughness in Jon’s voice when he tries once more to call them to order. “I have more to say, my lords!”

He feels more than sees Sansa’s sidelong glance, but he keeps his attention on the crowd. “Listen!” he shouts again over the rabble. He thumps his hand on the table and a few men begin to shut up, but then a younger Cerwyn with yellow hair whom Jon is certain has never seen a day of battle begins caterwauling about his honor.

Sansa rises in her seat. They’d agree she would intercede on Jon’s behalf if the bannermen would not listen to him, but even in the unlikely circumstance that the lords had been patient listeners ready to hear Jon out, Jon still would’ve made her speak. He knows that her words are necessary for any of this to turn out right. 

“My lords!” she calls to them, and with a gracious smile for Lyanna Mormont and Alys Karstark, adds, “My ladies!”

One by one they fall silent, turning to her with unmistakable respect and, yes, even ardor. In Jon’s absence, Sansa has enraptured his men. The older men look upon her with pride in their eyes, this girl they’d once castigated for not being enough of a Stark. The younger men — he does not care for their looks at all. It occurs to him that suitors will surely begin to ask for her hand soon; it’s a miracle it hasn’t happened already. Any man among them would be a fool not to seek to marry the Lady of Winterfell. Any man among them would be a fool not to love her.

“You once swore yourself to my father Eddard Stark,” Sansa says, “and you’ve now sworn yourself to his son. Do you remember that day? You called him the White Wolf and you made him your king. You chose Jon Snow because you knew that he does not desire power for the sake of power — you knew that he would never put his pride above our needs. You saw that Jon wanted only to protect us and to protect the North, and _that_ is why you crowned him.” 

Every man in the hall is riveted to her, and he knows it is not simply her beauty that draws them. He recalls how Daenerys looked atop her dragon, like nothing in the world could ever touch her. That is how Sansa looks now, doing nothing but standing tall and speaking to a crowd of unhappy men. Even Tyrion, whose smile is apparent even from the back of the room, seems impressed. 

“It is true that Jon has made an alliance with Daenerys Targaryen, but he didn’t do it for himself. He did it because as our king, it is his duty to keep us safe, and with Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons on our side, we will be safe. The smallfolk who depend on us will be safe. I know it’s not what we wanted. I know it hurts our pride as Northerners. But like the man we chose as king, we must put our need before our pride, and this alliance is what we need.”

Absolute silence reigns for a long minute as they take this in. Finally, Cerran Hornwood demands, “And what do we even know about this Targaryen bitch?”

The threatening look Brienne sends his way is enough to force him back to his seat, but even then, several men, including Lord Hornwood, whisper fierce admonishments. They sense, even if he does not, that he has not shown Sansa the deference that is due her. 

Jon finds his voice, too, and growls, “If you ever speak so disrespectfully before Lady Sansa again — ”

“Jon. It’s all right.” She finds the lord’s face in the crowd and bestows him with a tolerant smile. “Lord Cerran. All of you. I know that tempers are high, but Queen Daenerys is, if nothing else, a guest of Winterfell, and I do not allow my guests to be spoken of in such terms.”

“Hear hear!” someone cries from the back. It might be Tyrion.

Cerran Hornwood, twice Sansa’s age and then some, looks cowed and murmurs an apology.

“I know you do not trust Queen Daenerys,” Sansa says. “You do not know her. But Jon does, and when you raised your swords for him, you put your trust in him. He tells us that the dragon queen is a powerful and fair ruler who will see us through the Long Night, and so we must trust him now as we trusted him then.”

She gazes out across their faces, her own expression serious and calm, and then, with a nod at Jon, she resumes her seat.

Some murmuring follows Sansa’s speech, and after a minute or two, Lord Glover stands. “Very well said, my lady. Very well said. You have done well to remind us of the pledges we made here in this hall all those moons ago. However, much as I respect your judgment, Lady Stark, and yours, Your Grace, I would judge this dragon queen for myself. We will see what kind of woman she is tonight, and we will decide what we think of her.” He bows, something almost chivalrous in the gesture as he looks up at Sansa. “But we will keep what you say in mind when we do.”

“I thank you, Lord Glover,” says Sansa.

Next, Lyanna Mormont breaks her silence. “I know you have as great a love for the North as I do, Lady Stark, and I know the North did not come to you or your brother easily. So I know you do not tell us lightly that you would give it up to the dragon queen.” Her hard black eyes are more unyielding than Jon remembered. “But I swore that I would know no king but the King in the North whose name is Stark. Jon Snow is my king. No one else.”

A burst of cheers echoes through the hall.

“You’re right,” Jon says. “Both of you. You should have a chance to decide for yourselves. Tonight you will have that chance. And you did swear yourself to the Stark name, and I am humbled by it — but I never had the Stark name.” He catches sight of Tyrion again. What will he report back to Daenerys? But it doesn’t matter. It must be done.

“You have a choice in this,” Jon says, and he can sense Sansa tensing, trying to hide her confusion. He can almost hear her mind racing; this was not a part of their discussion this morning. “I urge you to choose an alliance with Daenerys Targaryen. But should you reject her as your queen, know that I will not keep my crown. Winterfell and the North should have never belonged to me in the first place.” He swallows. Davos nods. “Sansa Stark is the true heir of Lord Eddard Stark and King Robb Stark, and I renounce my claim to what is rightfully hers.”

Mayhem. Men are leaping from their seats and shouting in the rush to be heard — Jon cannot but notice the cries of support that pour forth amidst the confusion — and at the back of the room Tyrion has clambered to his feet, setting aside his wine, all pleasantness vanished from his face. Lyanna Mormont has bent her head to consult with her aunts. Davos watches the crowd with shrewd eyes, and Brienne glances between Jon and Sansa with a look of astonishment. Bran, of course, is unfazed. But it is Sansa whose response Jon awaits. She is staring at him with wide eyes, her lips parting as if to ask a question she has not yet formulated.

He whispers her name, and she finally blinks, turning back to the crowd. 

She rises. “My lords. This is — ” She shakes her head, tries again. “Jon has traveled a long way to be home, and he is very tired. Any decisions about his rule cannot be made in haste, and I think we have all had enough of this talk for today. Winter is here, but tonight we will feast. It may be the last feast for some time, so I urge you to put these matters aside for the evening and enjoy yourselves.”

They are still calling out to her, and Brienne seems ready to run to her side, but she places a firm hand on Jon’s arm and all but pushes him through a side passage, down a long corridor, and into a council room. He spares a thought for Bran, left behind with the shouting men, but he cannot imagine this Bran will even notice them.

She slams the door behind them. “What was _that_?”

Here they are, arguing again, but Jon feels a thrill from the color in her cheeks, the spark in her eyes. He holds up two placating hands. “It was the only thing to do.”

“It’s madness is what it is. Have you listened to a word I’ve said? I don't want your crown. Do you even realize how precarious your position is already? And what will your dragon queen have to say if the North decides to recognize me instead of her? Or would you watch me bend the knee to her too?”

She’s pacing back and forth in slow, deliberate steps. The hem of her gown shushes softly across the floor with each footfall, and every now and again she lays both hands across her sternum and takes deep breaths. “We must tell them that you — you misspoke. You only meant that I am to be Lady of Winterfell — ”

“Of course you’re meant to be Lady of Winterfell,” Jon says. “But it all should’ve been yours.”

Her eyes flash and she stops pacing. “It all should’ve been _Robb_ ’s, but he’s dead and Father’s dead and Bran’s — as he is. They chose you. You are the one who can lead them.”

“Aye, into battle. I can lead an army, but not a kingdom. Those men love you, I can see it, Sansa. I know the smallfolk love you. You are meant to lead our people.”

She huffs, making no effort to hide her irritation, and this, at least, is progress. “And what about Daenerys?”

“I … ” He tries not to frown. “I think I can convince her that this is the best course. I think I have a plan.”

“You _think_? This morning you told me that we would all die without her help, that you bent the knee because it was the only way. And now you’ve simply come up with another plan? This isn’t pretend, Jon, this is real. This is our home and our family and our lives, and you keep making decisions about them without even telling me.”

“I’m sorry, I — ”

“Yes, say you’re sorry,” she snaps. “Say you’re sorry and hold me in your arms and hope that I forget that you keep doing this. I — ” She cuts herself off with a frustrated groan. “You use my love for you against me. It isn’t fair.”

His face is burning and he knows, gods, he knows that they should’ve had this conversation this morning, but it will change everything. He wanted to pretend one more time. To smile at each other and to talk about the world as if it wasn’t ending, to pretend dragons weren’t at their door and the dead weren’t breathing down their necks. To pretend that he was still Jon Snow, just Jon Snow, as he’d always been.

“I have to tell you something.”

“What now?”

He means to start at the beginning, to tell her slowly the way he did for Davos, to ease her into it as Sam and Bran had tried to ease him into it, but it all gets jumbled in his head and in his mouth and the only words he can say are, “Lyanna Stark was my mother.”

Her lips part in a soundless gasp, and a red flush creeps steadily up her face. “That doesn’t make sense. Lyanna is our aunt. Father’s sister. He — ”

“He wasn’t my father.” He doesn’t know how the words spill out so easily, when they are like another knife in his chest every time he thinks them. “Ned Stark wasn’t — he wasn’t my father.” Her ragged breath is the only sign she gives that she has heard him, so he barrels on, “It was Rhaegar Targaryen. He … it wasn’t like they always said. He and Lyanna ran away together. He married her. I’m — ”

“Don’t be absurd. Of course you’re Father’s son. This morning in the Godswood I thought you might be his ghost, you looked so much like him.”

He shrugs. “I have the Stark look, and so did he. So did Lyanna.”

“You’re telling me you're not my brother?” There is no answer to that question that will not damn him, but she doesn’t wait for him to say anything. “How long have you known? You haven’t always — ?”

“Bran told me last night.”

“ _Last night_?” She covers her mouth to contain a half-hysterical laugh, and then immediately sobers. “You’re certain?”

He nods.

“And Father never told you?” A sharp intake of breath. “And he never told Mother. Why wouldn’t he say something?”

“To protect me,” Jon says, repeating the words Bran had spoken the night before. They sound no less hollow today. “To keep me from Robert Baratheon’s fury.”

“It’s still not right. He let you go the Wall without knowing!” 

He can see her trying to reconcile her understanding of her father with this information. He’s tried to do the same. Honorable Ned Stark had not betrayed his wife — but he lied to her. He lied to Jon. He let Jon believe he was one of them, different but still theirs, when really he belonged to no one at all. All the ways he defined himself: Robb’s brother, Eddard’s son, even bastard. Even his _name_. None of it was real.

“And this is why you renounced your claim?” she realizes.

“I never had a claim. But if the North rallies behind Daenerys just because I command it, they’ll rebel as soon as they learn the truth. It’ll be a Targaryen conspiracy. They’ll feel tricked. They must decide on their own, led by a true Stark, or this alliance will fall to shit before we even start the battle.”

“I … suppose that’s true,” she admits. “But why must they ever learn the truth? You’ve been Father's son all these years. Why must that change now?”

“You know why.” Secrets always come to light, and he will not be like Joffrey Baratheon, whose parentage was only a liability to his family and a disgrace to his rule. “Honor demands that I tell the truth.”

“Honor? Your honor will get you _killed_.” She grabs his forearm, the fingers digging in almost painfully. “Does Daenerys know?”

He shakes his head and feels her grip loosen. “I — I’ve spoken with Davos. We made a plan. He advised that I go to her tonight, before the feast. I’ll swear that I’ve no desire to sit the Iron Throne and that her rule is uncontested. I’ll call her queen all she wishes.”

“You know that’s not how it works,” Sansa says. “And if Davos let you believe that would work he’s more of a fool than I thought. You’re — you’re the son of Rhaegar Targaryen.” She makes a face as if the words taste strange, and every sentence she speaks has the sound of a question, but still she continues. “And you say they married?” Her eyes widen. “You’re not a bastard, then. You’re the _heir_. Even if you weren’t, some may say you have the stronger claim. You’re a threat to her. You can’t just promise not to be.”

He scrapes his hand through his hair, scratching at his scalp. Sansa is right. Sansa is always right. He wishes there was any other way.

“I wouldn’t just promise. Daenerys has no one left in the world. She is the last Targaryen.” He rubs the back of his neck. He cannot bear facing her, not now, and so he stares at the ground as he says, “She may be happy to have found family. She is … fond — ”

“ _Fond_?” The word as sour as the goat’s milk Tormund likes to drink. “Yes, I suppose that is the Targaryen way.”

Gods. His aunt. His _aunt_. And he’s given her the kingdom. It could not look worse.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, to lessen the horror, but the anger has already drained from Sansa’s eyes — or perhaps she’s only hidden it. She grips Jon’s burned hand tight.“I’m sorry,” she says. “That was beneath me. And whatever you are to Daenerys, it is evident she already cares for you. If you’re her kin … ” 

Not looking at him, she begins to trace a circle into his palm with her thumb, and all of the air freezes in Jon’s lungs. “Petyr told me that you would marry Daenerys. He said that everyone thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I didn’t want to believe him, but it made sense. It makes even more sense now. Together, you can start a new Targaryen dynasty.”

She pulls his hand to her mouth and kisses the back of it. “I see now. You love her. You’ll rule together.” She nods to herself, her eyes still on his hand. “But please, for the sake of our family, once this war is over, the North will be sovereign. I will rule if you cannot. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s one of us. A Stark.”

He can’t think with her so close. He has to step back, he has to forget the softness of her touch. “I don’t want to marry Daenerys. I don’t — I don’t care about Daenerys.”

“No?” Something changes in her tone, and she’s back to being cold and unreadable. He can’t understand it. He can't understand _her_. She drives him utterly mad. “I’m not stupid, Jon,” she says. “From the moment she stepped foot inside of Winterfell she has made it perfectly clear that she would have you for her own.”

“I don’t want to be hers.”

“Yet you gave her the North. You nearly gave her your life. You mean to tell me her beauty had nothing to do with it? They tell me you bedded her. That had nothing to do with it?”

All secrets come out in the end. He just shakes his head. “I already told you — ”

“I know.” She recites, “We need Daenerys to win the war. You had no other choice. I told our people, didn’t I? I did my duty. But now you will leave us so that you can marry a queen.” She covers her mouth and turns her back to him, and he has to clench his hands at his side to keep himself still.

“It’s not like that. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Her shoulders are rigid, and he stares at them, willing her to understand. He did what was best for the her and for the North. It is even what’s best for Daenerys. It will give them all a chance to trust each other.

“She’s powerful,” Sansa says finally, “and she is very beautiful. You clearly … like her. If you want to marry her, I understand. I do. Just — please don’t lie to me.”

He will marry Daenerys if he must, but he won’t let Sansa think he planned it this way, that he treated her as a pawn so that he might wed a queen. “I don’t want to marry her,” he says, he swears. “I wasn't thinking. I'd nearly died. I sought comfort with her, but I don’t love her.” When she looks at him, her eyes wet and her nose red, he can’t help but reach out and cup her face in his hands. He wipes the tear tracks away, sorry for each and every one, and then he leans in to press his forehead to hers. “I don’t love her. I don’t.”

“Why should it matter to me?” Her warm breath whispers across his lips. 

He can’t move his eyes from her trembling mouth. His pulse is racing out of his skin; everything inside of him burns, comet-bright and as consuming as wildfyre. For the first time he feels like a dragon.

She bites her lower lip and then releases it, leaving it plumper and pinker than before. Her eyelashes brush his skin as she closes her eyes. This time, her voice doesn’t shake: “Why should it matter to me who you love?”

There must be some answer she is looking for, but he can’t think of it, he can’t think anything, his head is spinning and his throat's gone dry and his skin is fire, and he wants to tell her, he wants to explain, but the only word he has, the only answer to her question, is her name. He whispers it one more time.

She kisses him.

One kiss, a gentle press of her mouth to his own and then back again, so fast he wonders if he didn’t dream it, but then she is there again, her mouth hot and falling open against his own, her hands snaking around his shoulders and drawing him closer, closer, so close he fears his heart may burst, and still she is kissing him, and every doubt that has plagued him, every bit of fear and guilt that has tormented him, the demons inside him that sent him running south because he couldn’t love like this, he _couldn’t_ , he couldn’t but he did — they go up in smoke as her tongue slides into his mouth and her fingers wind through his hair, tugging it loose, and when at last she breaks away from him, it is with a long, sweet sigh.

They stare at each other, panting hard.

He can’t make sense of it. Sansa’s mussed hair, her reddened lips, her blue eyes gone dark. The taste of her still in his mouth.

An age passes in the span of a dozen heartbeats, and then she steps out of his embrace, wiping her mouth and straightening her skirts. Her cheeks are still flushed, her braid half-undone. She meets his eyes once, and then averts her gaze. “Jon,” she says, grave, and reality comes rushing back. She is his _sister_ — isn’t she?

“I’m sorry,” Jon blurts. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have — ”

“Jon.” She closes her eyes and when she opens them again, her mask is back. She gives nothing away. “You must speak with Daenerys Targaryen,” she says. She reaches for the door and Jon can only watch her, unable to breathe, unable to move. “You must ask her to marry you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, here's part 2. I'm fairly confident there'll only be one more part, but there might also be an epilogue or something like that. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth
> 
> If you were wondering, my soundtrack for this chapter was "Dress" from the new Taylor Swift album:
> 
> All of this silence and patience,  
> pining and anticipation  
> My hands are shaking  
> from holding back from you (ah, ah, ah)  
> All of this silence and patience,  
> pining and desperately waiting  
> My hands are shaking from all this (ha, ha, ha, ha)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon makes his proposal to Daenerys. Things don't exactly go as planned.

The queen’s fury does not always shake the walls. At times it is a quiet thing, hidden in the glint of her eyes and the false curve of her lips. He’s seen it: with Cersei in the Dragon Pit, and on Dragonstone before that, when he stood before her and called himself the King in the North. Her easy confidence astounds him still — how certain she is of herself and of her place in the world, how effortlessly regal she is, even barefoot and half-dressed as he has seen her, even dirty and snow-soaked. A smile, a look, is all it takes to remind you that she is a queen. That she is a threat. 

It is her way of showing restraint.

But, like her dragons, _restraint_ is not her first instinct.

Today, her anger is a storm: she shouts and she rages, she demands answers, she demands justice. “You’ve betrayed my trust!” The elaborate braids piled atop her head quiver as she stalks back and forth across the gilded chamber. “You’ve made me look like a fool!”

From his spot beside the hearth, Tyrion watches her over the rim of his goblet. Since marching Jon to Daenerys’s chambers, he’s said nothing, but his disapproval has been palpable.

Jon doesn’t care.

Moments ago he was kissing Sansa — _kissing her_ — and all he knows now is that he will do whatever he must to protect her and her interests. He will weather Daenerys’s accusations and curses, and he will soothe her temper. Her pride. And he will offer himself, too: a bartering chip. He can give Daenerys his kinship, and his claim, and his vows.

It’s only fair. Sansa’s been sacrificed too many times in service of the ambitions and egos of those around her. For once someone should sacrifice for her.

When Daenerys tires herself out, panting and wet-eyed, Jon says, as gently as he can, “Daenerys, please.”

“I am your queen! Do not be so familiar with me.”

“Please,” he repeats. “Let me explain.”

“Explain? Yes, please explain to me, Lord Snow, why within a day of bringing me to Winterfell, where your people were meant to swear themselves to me, you’ve instead handed your crown to your sister.” Her faces pinches, crumpling for a second, before she composes herself. “I am Daenerys Targaryen, rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms. I am the Mother of Dragons. Do you know what happens to my enemies?”

He bites down on his first answer, saying only, “I have some idea. But I am not your enemy, Your Grace.”

She clasps her hands in front of her and takes a few deep breaths. The wide sleeves of her blood red gown drape from her wrist, gleaming in the room’s dim light. It is a lovely gown, with its deep neckline and its rich silk, and she looks lovely in it, but Jon knows that although the Northerners may be impressed by her beauty, they will not love her the better for it. 

“You swore yourself to me.” Her voice is deceptively calm. “And now you’ve made your sister a queen instead.”

She tracks his approach, and when he stands before her, close enough that she has no choice but to meet his gaze, she doesn’t flinch away. “I haven’t betrayed you,” he says. “Daenerys. Dany. Please listen.”

“Why should I?”

“Because … ” 

He ought to kiss her. It’s what she wants him to do. It’s what Tyrion would tell him to do. It’s what Sansa thinks he must do. Instead, he lifts one hand to brush a tendril of hair from her face, but it still makes her breath catch. “Because you’re going to want to hear what I have to say,” he murmurs. “I’m trying to help you, my queen. I want to help you.”

The look Daenerys gives him is hopeful, and it makes him hate himself. He doesn’t want to use her. Those nights they spent together were a mistake, but he hadn’t been trying to hurt her. He still would prefer not to hurt her. But better her than Sansa. Better her than his family, and the whole of the North. Besides, if he’s honest with himself, he has already used her — he used her to distract himself from Sansa, he used her to secure her aid in the war, he used her for her dragons and her armies, and there is no sense in stopping now simply because he’s begun to feel squeamish. He must be smart: it is the only way the people he cares about will make it through this alive.

It would be better, of course, if he believed that he could love her eventually, but now that he’s had Sansa in his arms, he can’t keep lying to himself.

Once, Jon might have been pleased at the thought of marrying a woman like Daenerys. Someone so beautiful and strong. If only she wasn’t the dragon queen, and his aunt, and the woman who put his best friend’s family to death. If he had gone east, perhaps, and met her in one of the Free Cities, and neither of them were the heir to anything: he just a bastard; she just the daughter of a lost dynasty. Maybe then.

Maybe he even could’ve loved Daenerys in this life, if Sansa never rode through the gates of Castle Black and threw herself into his arms. If she never laughed with him and argued with him and sewed his clothes for him; if she never defended herself and her house to Lyanna Mormont and Lord Glover, so brave and proud. If she didn’t hum softly and sweetly as she sat at the hearth, needle in hand. If her blue eyes, alighting on him in a moment of joy, didn’t remind him so much of the girl she used to be, the carefree, naive romantic who was still untouched by the cruelty of the world. Maybe, if she didn’t have hair kissed by fire.

It’s not worth speculating. It doesn’t matter. Happy or not, love or not, he will marry Daenerys, if that’s what it will take to save them all. And he knows, deep down, that he will kill her too — if it comes to that. He prays it does not come to that.

Daenerys strokes her hand up his arm, her touch tentative and warm, and he makes himself smile at her. “How does this help, Jon?” she asks, voice low.

“Yes,” says Tyrion, finally speaking up. “How does this help?”

Jon steps out of Daenerys’s grasp in order to address them both. “It’s … ” How can he even begin to explain? He must tell them about Rhaegar and his mother, but he can’t simply blurt it out as he had done with Sansa. He has to be more careful. More strategic. He has to _think_.

“Our agreement was that the North would be yours after the war, if we survive. After you’ve proven yourself to them.” Yes, that is what he’d told her, and besides — “Right now, the North will not follow me.”

Daenerys lowers herself onto an upholstered silver settee as if it were a throne and regards him with disappointment. “Do not lie to me.” Her eyes burn into him, willing him to make himself abject before her. She wants to remind him that he is her subject.

He does not kneel, but he drops his gaze, bows his head. “It’s no lie, Your Grace. I was south too long.” This is the place to begin: remind them that they are the ones who’ve made it impossible for him to bring the North to heel, even if he still was Ned Stark’s last living son. “It broke my people’s trust in me. How can they follow a King in the North who abandoned the North?” He glances up, but the queen seems unmoved by his explanation. Then again, she still calls herself the queen of Mereen, all the way across the Narrow Sea.

“There must always be a Stark in Winterfell,” he explains. “I’ve known it all my life, and so has every man, woman, and child here. _Sansa_ is that Stark. If you want to hold the North,” he says, and it is Tyrion’s eyes he meets now, “then Sansa needs to be the one to give it to you.”

They keep their silence for a long, long moment, before Tyrion notes, “I can’t help but notice that you failed to tell us this before we sailed from Dragonstone.”

“I didn’t know until we got here.” At Daenerys’s arched eyebrow, he admits, “Aye, I suspected I was losing influence, but I couldn’t know how much until I was here, and then — ” Then he learned about his parentage, and it forced his hand. “This is how you rule, after the war. It must be Sansa’s choice.”

Jon can see Daenerys beginning to soften. It has not occurred to her that Sansa may not bend the knee.

But Tyrion knows Sansa better, and he frowns. “And if Sansa won’t swear fealty to Daenerys?”

“Then — ” Jon clears his throat. “Then maybe it is best to let the North remain independent.”

He’s not surprised that Daenerys’s response is an unpleasant laugh, the softness in her face gone as quickly as it came. “I should give up what is mine because your sister is stubborn and foolish?”

He grits his teeth. “No. Give up the North because we can make peace. The North will be your ally, and we can — we can bind this kingdom to the throne in other ways.”

At this, Tyrion narrows his eyes, and Jon suspects he has figured out Jon’s game, but Daenerys remains coy.

“Marriage,” says Jon at last.

“Is this a proposal, Jon?” she asks.

“It is.”

He doesn’t think he’s imagining the flush of pleasure in her cheeks, but she doesn’t answer him right away, engaging in silent consultation with Tyrion, their gazes speaking back and forth until Tyrion asks, “And this helps Her Grace in the North how?”

“Sansa is my family. The Starks are my family. They would not act against me.” He adds, significantly, “Nor I against them.”

Daenerys considers this carefully, and he tries, as best he can, to regard her with desire, with affection, to encourage her to keep wanting him, this woman who could murder everyone he loves in a moment if she chose. But if she cares for him, she will do this. She must.

When she speaks, however, she only says, “You Northerners are difficult people. I wish you’d discussed this with me, Jon. You’re too quiet for your own good. What if instead of speaking with you, I’d simply taken my men and left?”

“Would you have?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “The thought crossed my mind. But I’ve seen what is beyond the Wall and I do not aspire to be queen of whatever it leaves behind.”

The Night King. The Wall. The risen dragon. He will have to tell her, but not yet, not while she’s still so unpredictable. 

But he must explain about his mother. It is a secret too great to keep, and if she should learn at the wrong moment, everything he’s worked for could fall to pieces.

“There’s more,” he says.

“More? Another alliance I suppose?” Daenerys sounds bored. “Tyrion might marry Sansa again.”

“ _No_ ,” Jon says, more vehemently than is wise. “No, that’s not what I … ” He shakes his head, ignoring the strange look that Tyrion gives him. “What I mean to say is … ”

“What is it, Snow?”

Jon takes a deep breath and meets Daenerys’s violet eyes. He pretends that it is only the two of them there in the room, keeping his voice soft, intimate: “I would speak with you alone.”

She watches him for a moment, and he half-wonders if she’s going to call forth her dragons — leagues away though they are — and destroy him before he even gets the chance to make his plea, but then she turns and nods at Tyrion. It’s a clear dismissal, one that Tyrion seems hesitant to acknowledge, but something in her expression must cow him because after a moment he offers a brief bow and exits the room.

“Are you going to seduce me?” Daenerys asks, smiling now. A smile he knows better than to trust. “Are you going to beg for my hand?”

He shakes his head. “There is something I must tell you, Your Grace.”

“You wish to tell me how beautiful I am? Or perhaps you wish to swear your devotion? Would you like to make love to me once more before you crown some other queen in my stead? Or offer me a proposal instead of a kingdom?”

“I want to offer you family,” he says. “Kinship. You yourself have told me that you are the last Targaryen, but — what if you weren’t?”

Her smile fades, her shoulders tensing.

“House Targaryen is not dead,” he tells her.

“No,” she agrees slowly, bewildered, “but it will die with me. There are no others.”

He takes her hand, his heart beating in his throat. She lets him. He doesn’t love her, but it occurs to him that he would not be unwilling to call her kin. He once longed for the family that had been lost to him — the mother he never knew — and so must she have. She never knew her family, neither her parents nor Rhaegar, none but her brother Viserys, and from what she’s said of him, he had been no true family. If only she could’ve met Maester Aemon, just once. If only Jon had known her when they were children — aunt she may be, but they are of an age and could’ve been raised together like siblings. 

But, of course, he would never trade the Starks for anything, would never shed his wolfskin for dragonhide. He doesn’t want to be a Targaryen, and wishes he could carve that part of him from his body, forget it was ever there. 

Still, he pities Daenerys. How could Rhaegar do it, throw his family and his kingdom into chaos for a foolish, dangerous love — if love it even was? If he’d truly loved Lyanna, he would’ve let her live her life, safe and cared for, instead of stealing her away from her family and exiling her to Dorne, where she would’ve died alone if Ned Stark hadn’t found her. 

Jon forces his thoughts back to the present, to Daenerys and her curious frown. “Jon?”

“Last night, I spoke with my — ” He bites the inside of his cheek. He doesn’t know how to explain Bran to Daenerys, doesn’t know if she would even believe him, and he doesn’t want to try unless he must. He starts again. “My friend Sam — ”

“Tarly,” she says cooly.

“Aye. He’s been at the Citadel these past moons. And while he was there, he learned — he found proof — that I am not the son of Eddard Stark.” The heat rises to his cheeks once more when he speaks the words, the fire of his own anger threatening to break the surface, but he pushes on: “He raised me as his bastard, but in truth I was his nephew.” He stares at the tapestry on the wall behind her and forces the words out: “My mother was Lyanna Stark.” Her hand tenses in his grip. “My father was Rhaegar Targaryen. Your brother.”

She doesn’t laugh, but she huffs — not believing, and yet too startled to deny it. 

“Daenerys,” Jon says. “You’re not the last.”

* * *

She doesn’t believe him, of course. Not at first. She accuses him of trickery, of trying to usurp her. She accuses him of plotting against her, says he must be in league with the Tarlys and the Lannisters and all of her enemies to the south. She threatens to feed him to Drogon’s flame to disprove his claims. “You are no dragon,” she tells him. “You would burn.” He doesn’t doubt it.

But it is the mention of Drogon that at last tempers Daenerys. After she says his name, a queer, vulnerable expression appears on her face, something like wonder — or maybe fear — stealing away all of her queenly self-assurance. She looks at him with wide, wide eyes and murmurs, “He let you touch him. That day on Dragonstone.”

“I remember.”

“I wondered why … ” She scans him once more, searching, he supposes, for some trace of Targaryen in him, some hint of violet in his eyes or silver in his hair. He doesn’t think there’s anything to see, but after a moment, she asks, “Are you really Rhaegar’s son?” and he nods, a queasy feeling swirling in his gut. “And you would have us marry?”

“I would. I don’t want to steal your throne, Daenerys. I would have us be allies. But I must protect the North, too.”

She lays her hand on his thigh, fingers digging in. The heat is rising in her. Not fury. Something else.

“We could rule together,” she tells him, and he knows that, from her, this is generosity, perhaps even love. Before, she’d meant to make him a consort. Now, she would have him as her equal, or something near it at least.

Her breath touches his cheek. “All of Westeros will belong to Targaryens once more.”

He closes his eyes. He lets her kiss him. He makes his choice.

* * *

The trouble is, none of her advisors will approve.

At first, they are amenable. Tyrion seems irritated but unsurprised, while Varys smiles and commends them on uniting the kingdoms. Jorah Mormont says nothing, his hurt palpable, but he nods with understanding and remains cordial with Jon. Of them all, Missandei is most pleased, clasping Daenerys’s hands in her own and murmuring something in a language Jon does not know. Whatever it is, it makes Daenerys laugh.

But then Daenerys tells them the rest.

After a tense stretch of silence, Varys speaks first, his voice airy, almost careless, as he considers Jon. “There were whispers, of course, when he first turned up with a motherless child. But the honorable Lord Stark was a better liar than I imagined. Lucky for him, you have his look. I can’t see a trace of Rhaegar in you.” He purses his lips — whether in thought or disapproval, Jon cannot tell — and then says, “His sister was precious to him, I daresay. And so were you.”

Yes, Jon thinks, holding it fast to his heart. At least I know that to be true. He lied to me, he lied to everyone, he kept a secret he had no right to keep, but he meant to protect me. He tried to protect me. He loved me.

But Daenerys has no time for sentimentality, and she turns to her advisors expectantly. “You do understand what this means?” 

“Khaleesi, if this is true, Snow’s claim is a threat.” When Daenerys’s eyes flash at Jorah Mormont, his voice gentles. “Not to me. I will follow you until the day I die. But he might betray you. You have given him your dragons and your armies. Do not let him near your crown.”

Beside Jorah, Varys is frowning, perhaps thinking the same thing.

Jon can’t let these ideas fester in her mind; she’s too paranoid already, fearing betrayal in all the wrong places. He has no ambitions — what does he care for the Iron Throne? The betrayal is in his heart, and he will carry it there always.

He reminds them that he didn’t know about any of this until yesterday. That he has never wanted the Iron Throne. That all his life he’s believed himself a bastard, his sights set no higher than the Night’s Watch. “I don’t want a crown,” he says. “I never have.”

“Yet here you stand, King in the North.” There’s no accusation in Tyrion’s tone as he watches Jon, his head tilted, his mind, Jon is certain, moving in circles too fast for Jon to follow. “A title handed to you despite the greater claim of your sister — excuse me, your _cousin_.” He looks meaningfully at Daenerys. “My sister, despite her many faults, has always understood this: the people will put power in the hands of a man long before they trust it to a woman.”

Swallowing the guilt, Jon says, “I never asked for it. I never meant — ”

Daenerys cuts in sharply, her hand clutching Jon’s bicep. “Enough of this. Jon has resigned his crown and relinquishes his claim. Have you not?” He nods. “He will put it in writing and swear it before my subjects. And if he ever betrays me, he will be reminded that he may be a Targaryen, but _I_ am the Mother of Dragons.”

She lets the threat linger in the air. Then, with a coquettish smile at Jon, she says, “But I will marry him, and our family will rule over Westeros once again, as is our right. It is my destiny.”

Jon has no more interest in destiny now than he did when Stannis and Melisandre spoke of it, so all he says is, “The Iron Throne is yours, Daenerys. After this war, I promised to help win it for you. And I will rule beside you, if that is your wish.”

“If you survive.” Tyrion might be remembering what Jon once told him, that he does not expect to live through this war. He might just be cynical. He asks Daenerys, “And who do you mean to name as your heir?”

“This again?”

“You need an heir.” Despite the hardening expression on Daenerys’s face, Tyrion continues, “I believe that you will be a good ruler, I do, but ruling is not as easy as conquering. The realm will need stability after so much war, and if you do not name an heir, there is no chance for stability.” He laces his fingers together on top of the table, very grim, and Jon sees nothing of the man he met all those years ago — the Imp, jocular and unserious, even as he offered advice that Jon has never forgotten. 

Tyrion says, “You say you cannot have a child.” He tries to say it kindly, but Jon can feel Daenerys go stiff beside him. “Even if you could, it would be a mistake to have that child with Jon Snow. It is the mistake your father made, and your father’s father, and the Targaryens before them.”

Daenerys rises imperiously from her seat, glaring down at Tyrion. “There will be no child.”

She waits for Tyrion’s reply with an arched brow, but it is Varys who speaks next: “Next even for Jon Snow?”

Jon whips around to face Varys. The Spider. On Dragonstone, Davos warned him to be careful of this man. What is he playing at?

“Your Grace,” says Varys smoothly. “I can see that you and Lord Snow care about each other. (Or would it be Lord Targaryen now? Ah, perhaps a matter for another time.) But you must see that this newfound knowledge presents an opportunity that we could never consider before.” 

Daenerys, still standing, exhales softly. She’s listening.

“You can rebuild House Targaryen — raise it from the dead, just as you brought dragons back into the world. Your legacy will be even greater. You will be known for what you have built, not only what you have burned.”

“I will _build_ Westeros to its former greatness,” Daenerys says, but she barely seems to note her own words. More firmly, she tells him, “Say what you really mean.”

Varys flourishes a hand out from the depths of his sleeve and bows his head obsequiously. “Do not marry Jon Snow, Your Grace. Marry him to someone else, and appoint his child your heir. If we act quickly, he might wed and, ah, begin to expand the Targaryen line, even before you face the threat to the North.”

Jon opens his mouth, but Daenerys silences him with a look. What would he say anyway? That the thought of wedding and bedding a woman over the next few days — it cannot be weeks — before he leads armies into the frigid North and to their almost certain death is so absurd he could laugh? He half expects Daenerys to say something of the sort herself.

But, slipping back into her seat, she only says, “Even if that were my wish, there is no need for him to marry in order to father a child. He can be my husband and put a child in another woman’s belly. We’ll legitimize the child and raise it as our heir.”

His stomach curdles. Of all the ends he imagined, Daenerys ordering him to father a bastard was not among them. Before he can object, however, Lord Varys has swooped in once more. “Very true, Your Grace, but I suspect the woman I have in mind would not agree to such terms.”

“And what woman do you have in mind?”

Varys smiles that enigmatic smile. “Why, Lady Stark, of course.”

The blood drains from Jon’s face, and he feels the oppressive weight of too many eyes on him. Their gazes burn through him. They see everything he has tried so hard to hide. The roar in his ears only grows louder as he tries to think about something other than _marrying Sansa, they want me to marry Sansa_.

“It makes sense,” he hears Tyrion say.

“If she agrees it, of course,” adds Varys.

A moment that seems to last for an eternity, and then Tyrion’s green eyes slide to where Jon sits, speechless. “She will.”

Jon should have brought Davos to this meeting. Davos, Sam, _anyone_ , anyone who can force him back into his own skin, make him forget the softness of her lips, the way her cold fingers burned as they slid across the back of his neck. Her breath, shaky, warm.

Varys lifts his hands in a soothing gesture, his attention still on Daenerys, whose mouth has thinned into a hard line. “This solves two problems with one simple alliance. If Jon Snow, your subject and your nephew, marries Sansa Stark, he will bind the North to the rest of Westeros. Their child will be a Targaryen, and you can raise him — or her — to rule after you.”

“So,” Daenerys says slowly, “you would have me give not only my kingdom and my crown to Sansa Stark, but my husband as well.”

“You mistake me. This is how you take the North without blood and without strife. Surely the North would not object to being under southern rule if it is a child of their own who is to one day rule them.”

But Daenerys is shaking her head. “No. I’ve already made my decision.”

“Daenerys,” Tyrion says, gentle again. “Before we left Meereen, we discussed this. You know that marriages are strategic. Queens do not get to marry for love.”

“The girl is his sister!” Daenerys bursts out.

“She is his cousin,” says Tyrion. 

Varys adds, “And he _is_ a Targaryen. It’s hardly unprecedented.”

Jon bites the inside of his mouth and gathers the courage to speak. One wrong word and everything might fall apart. He cannot sit here and listen to them barter Sansa’s future like this. She is not a pawn to be traded back and forth between men. Not even him. Not even when he wants her.

Marrying Sansa is out of the question, it must be. She would never agree, and even if she did — even if she could — even if she wanted to, could the North accept it? What about Bran and Arya? If Ned Stark were still alive, he would banish Jon from the continent just for thinking of it, and Lady Catelyn would do worse.

He can’t marry Sansa, surely not, but he can’t give Daenerys what she wants either. Not if what she wants is all of the North, all of his family, under her control.

“Daenerys,” he says, his voice husky. “What do _you_ want me to do?”

“You would marry her?”

He grips the pommel of Longclaw. “If it’s what she wants.”

“You could bed her? Your own sister?”

“It would be my duty, if she were my wife.”

“And if she weren’t?” Daenerys asks. “Varys says she will not agree to bear a child outside of marriage, but I think she could be persuaded. For the good of her people, for the good of the realm. She seems like a dutiful, diligent girl. And it’s not as if she’s untouched.”

He tastes blood, and must fight to keep his voice even and his shaking hands still. “I will marry you, if that’s what you want. But I won’t do this. Don’t ask it of me. I owe the Starks too much. I owe her too much.”

Tyrion watches him far too closely, while Varys offers him a placid smile and Jorah Mormont scowls, though the scowl doesn’t seem directed at anyone in particular. Finally Daenerys rolls her eyes and groans with impatience.

“Why all this talk of succession? Let me win this war, and win this realm, and then we can decide.”

Tyrion looks grim. “Have you given any thought to what will happen when you die? Whether it’s in this war, or when you’re old and gray in your husband’s arms, you will die one day. And there is every chance that your dragons will outlive you.”

Daenerys, going very, very still, turns to face her Hand. “That is very near to treason, Tyrion. Tread carefully.” The command in her face, in her voice, silences them all for a moment, and if the others are anything like Jon, their throats have gone tight with the certainty that one wrong word will ignite an explosion.

But then Missandei speaks.

She hasn’t said a word since Daenerys revealed Jon’s parentage, perhaps unfamiliar with or uninterested in Westerosi matters of succession, but now she touches Daenerys softly on the wrist, a touch so light that it seems at odds with her firm tone as she says, “But he is right. Your dragons are loyal to you, Your Grace. But dragons may live many centuries, and I fear what they will do without you.” She lowers her eyes. “I remember the shepherd’s daughter.”

“As do I,” says Daenerys sharply, pulling her arm free from Missandei’s grasp, but the flame of her anger seems to snuff out all at once.

Jon doesn’t know exactly what they are talking about, but he can guess. Gods, if these beasts set foot near Winterfell he loathes to imagine what they will do. And yet he cannot stop imagining it.

Clambering to his feet, he says, “I have to go.” 

“But — ”

He cuts Daenerys off. “The feast will begin soon, and you will meet the Northern Lords for the first time. This discussion can wait until tomorrow.” He nods hastily to the rest of the room as he stumbles to the door. “Excuse me.”

Everything is such a fucking mess.

* * *

When he makes it to his chambers, he puts his face in his hands and leans against the closed door with a groan. He’s trying to be smart, to do as Sansa asked of him. He’s trying to protect her, to do as he once promised. But everything is too tangled up now, Targaryens and Starks, marriage and sex and politics, his own impossible desires.

“What did you do to Sansa?”

Jon nearly jumps out of his skin, his hand going straight to Longclaw before he recognizes Arya, sitting cross-legged on his bed with her sword, still sheathed, flat across her lap. His heart slows enough for him to notice the look in her eyes, too-perceptive and so much colder than he remembers, and he suppresses the throb of sadness it brings.

“Arya. What are you doing here?”

“I heard Sansa crying,” she says. Before he can make sense of the emptiness in her voice, she adds, “When I passed her door. What did you do?”

His throat goes dry; his stomach roils. The guilt is as cold as ice, and to think, he let himself imagine marrying her. He never should’ve touched her. 

(Maybe, something inside of him says, he never should’ve let her go.)

“What did she say to you?” he asks warily.

“She wouldn’t let me in.”

When Arya won’t stop glaring him, he says, “I didn’t — I don’t know.”

“You’re lying. It must’ve been bad, whatever it was. Sansa doesn’t cry. Not anymore.” Her expression sours. “Trust me, I know.”

“Arya,” he sighs, dropping into a chair, heavy and aching. He is so old, and so tired, and he would like to sleep for a very long time. Maybe forever. “I’m trying.”

Like that, she’s standing beside him, Needle hanging from her belt, her arms folded over her chest. He knows he can move fast — it’s part of how he’s survived on the battlefield all these long years — but he’s never seen anyone move like Arya, smooth as a stream. He can’t help but admire it, her effortless grace, even as he realizes how dangerous she is. 

Her face is hard. “I don’t like to hear her cry.”

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers. “I’m trying to make it right.” He wills her to see his regret, his exhaustion, the trying and the failing and the trying again.

Her mouth twitches, and she says, “Seven hells, don’t you cry too.” She almost sounds like his sister again. “I know you gave her the North. Told the men to make her a queen. Why did you do it? Did you think she was trying to take it from you?”

The thought had never occurred to him. “I gave it to her because it’s hers. It’s hers by rights, if Bran doesn’t want it. And she’ll do a far better job ruling than I ever will.”

Gods, Arya looks like Father — like _her_ father, that is. He can almost imagine her dispensing some of Ned Stark’s wisdom, urging him to be honest, to stick together. Reminding them that they are a family.

But what Arya says is, “Do you want that Targaryen woman to be our queen?”

“I want Sansa to be our queen.”

She narrows her eyes at him, something calculating and terrible behind her gaze, but after a moment she says, “I believe you.”

“Thank you. But, Arya, she may have to give way to Daenerys. I don’t want it to happen that way, but we need the dragons. We need those men.”

“So because she has dragons, she thinks she can storm in here and conquer us without even a fight. Are they really so powerful?”

“Aye. Too powerful.” He sighs, scrubbing a hand through his beard. “So I am doing what I can to keep Daenerys here. But I don’t want to hurt Sansa. I never want to hurt Sansa.”

Part of him fears that he’s said too much, that Arya will know, somehow, that he means that he’s already hurt Sansa; part of him fears that he can’t hide the secrets of his foolish, traitorous heart anymore.

But after a long moment, Arya says, “She would be a good queen.”

He smiles. “She would.”

But Arya’s attention has drifted, and she asks, “Will you wear them?” Jon doesn’t understand until he follows her gaze to the finery that Sansa made, which has been laid out for him. He thinks of her, thinking of him, stitching direwolves into his tunic. It warms him.

“They’re nice,” Arya says. “Perfect. Sansa’s work is always perfect.” Her mouth turns up, but it’s not a smile. It’s hollow. “I used to hate it. I hated her.”

“No,” Jon says, chest aching. “I know you didn’t.”

She regards him cooly, and he can tell she means to leave now, but he gestures for her to wait. His beloved little sister. If only she could be that little sister forever.

But it’s not possible, not for either of them.

Arya quirks an eyebrow. “Jon?”

“There’s something I have to tell you.” 

* * *

The feast is a feast: people eat and drink and dance. In the end, despite the day’s parade of meetings and arguments, strategy sessions and maneuvering, no engagements are announced and no secrets are revealed. The hall grows humid with sweating, noisy bodies, most of them crowded together at the rows of tables, but divided along lines of loyalty — Northmen with Northmen, Valemen with Valemen, the Essosi sequestered amongst themselves, and even a small contingent of free folk who do not mind the trappings of Winterfell’s walls. Voices rise and overlap, a constant buzz of conversation and laughter, with the occasional flint-strike of an argument that dies down as quickly as it erupts.

Jon still finds it strange to sit at the front of this room, the place of pride, instead of hidden in the back like a secret. Once he had longed for this, to sit beside his siblings, his father. He’d longed to be seen as a Stark. But it’s not his place. It was never his place.

Before Jon was born, before Robert’s Rebellion and the disappearance of Lyanna Stark, Rhaegar Targaryen must’ve presided over a thousand feasts, all of them larger and more spectacular than this one, and less fraught with the certainty of oncoming war. Joyous occasions. Feasts for tourneys and to welcome foreign delegates. His wedding feast. Jon tries to imagine this silver-haired prince, young and charming and handsome, with a careless, arrogant look. He remembers all Sam told him. It’s said that the people loved Rhaegar. It’s said he played the harp and sang so beautifully that women wept to hear it.

(There was not much Sam could tell him about Lyanna. The lives of women do not often make it into Maesters’ records.)

If Rhaegar had lived, would Jon have been raised as a prince? Would he have been taught how to smile and how to flatter, how to tell lies that do not twist around him until they bind him fast? Would he know how to find his way out of this mess? Or would he have just been another ruler more worried about a throne than the world, loving nothing so much as his own birthright?

He swallows a bitter mouthful of ale.

Beside him, Daenerys gleams in the firelight, her eyes glittering, her laughs easy. She’s lovely, with white furs at her collar and a silver gown that shines like snow, and men and women alike cannot keep their eyes from her. Her smiles, frequent and seemingly sincere, bring blushes to the faces of grown men. She has never been more charming, and the stern Northerners have indeed begun to warm to her, but whatever spell she is weaving, Jon does not feel it. 

His gaze is drawn again and again down the length of the table, to where Sansa sits deep in conversation with Tyrion Lannister. All he can see is the straight line of her back and the fall of her auburn hair, but at one point, perhaps warm from wine, she draws her hair over her shoulder and reveals the pale slope of her neck. She hasn’t glanced his way once tonight, not even when, brushing past him as they entered the hall, she’d asked, “Is it decided?” and he could do nothing but shake his head.

Bran is absent, but the lack of concern at the table tells Jon that this is not unusual; wherever he is, Sam is probably with him. Arya, on the other hand, has shown up, still dressed like a boy, though her clothes are clean and well-fitted, not to mention finished with the very same kind of flourishes that Sansa sewed into Jon’s own clothes. 

Once Arya has settled into her seat, she leans past Davos to wink at Jon.

She’d been shocked when he told her about his mother, but she told him it changed nothing, not really. As long as he didn’t chose _that woman_ over his family.

That, she would never forgive.

After a handful of speeches (none of them, thank the gods, delivered by him), the heads of the Northern families approach one by one to meet Daenerys. Daenerys’s own speech had been pretty, no ultimatums in sight. She regaled them with stories of her good deeds across the Narrow Sea. She swore to save Westeros. She riled up the Northerners’ already fierce animosity toward Cersei Lannister (an animosity that Jon will eventually have to dampen, if Cersei’s forces ever arrive) and she told them that the North called to her especially, because of the pride and strength of its people, because of the goodness of its leaders. She’d smiled then, a sideways smile directed at Jon that he pretended not to see.

The lords and ladies return Daenerys’s graciousness, offering her the respect that belongs to a foreign queen, never failing to call her _Your Grace_ , but they do not treat her as _their_ queen, and after their bows and curtsies, most of them pause before Sansa and offer a word of praise, another bow, a deeper curtsey. No one refers to her with a royal address, but Jon can feel how they want to. No doubt Daenerys can as well.

When he notices her temper is flaring, he rubs his thumb in gentle circles over her thigh and murmurs, “Patience,” and she allows her smile to ease back into place. 

Despite this, Daenerys seems pleased with the attentions of the guests of Winterfell, especially after Jon’s warnings that they might be colder and less welcoming than she is accustomed to. She drinks her wine, compliments the music, and admires the women’s fashions, her spirits high — at least until Yohn Royce appears before the dais.

Jon, weary of introducing Daenerys to the lords, does not object when Davos takes over, still willing to act the Hand even after all of Jon’s mistakes. He has risen from his seat and conducts lords and ladies toward Daenerys, and now, with Yohn Royce at his elbow, he introduces the man to Daenerys. “Lord Royce has recently become the Lord Regent of the Vale, the seat of House Arryn. He serves Lord Paramount Robin Arryn, the son of the late Jon Arryn.”

With a bow, Royce says, “Lord Robin wishes he could be here to greet you himself, but he is a young boy, and his health does not permit him to travel widely. We hope that in a few years, he will be able to assume the duties of House Arryn.”

From what Sansa has said of her cousin, the boy will not make much of a Lord Arryn or a Warden of the East, but perhaps with Royce to guide him, he will suffice. At the Wall, Sansa once confided that Littlefinger had considered a marriage between her and Robin, and she knew now, if she didn’t know it then, that if it had gone ahead, the boy would not have survived long. Baelish wouldn’t have allowed him to.

Jon wonders if, now that Littlefinger is dead, Sansa is considering the alliance again, but then he shakes his head. He doubts that Sansa wishes to marry at all. He hopes that she will never have to, except if it is for love.

In honeyed tones, Daenerys says, “The boy is sickly? I am sorry to hear it. Please know that I wish him well. And … if I’m not mistaken, Sansa Stark is the young lord’s heir?”

Royce, taken aback, glances over to where Sansa is seated. “Yes,” he says after a moment of hesitation. “Lady Stark is Robin’s cousin and heir.”

“Of course.” Her cool restraint is back, the threat that emanates from her even as she allows no hint of anger to cross her face. “Forgive my ignorance, Lord Royce, but I was not under the impression that the Vale is considered part of the North.”

“Indeed it is not, Your Grace.”

Daenerys’s brow wrinkles minutely as she playacts confusion. “Yet you are here. Surely you are not a subject of the King in the North. Nor, I believe, did the Vale declare sovereignty from the Iron Throne.”

At this, Royce seems to grow taller, his shoulders straightening, as he tells her in a clear, unafraid tone, “The Vale is an ally of the North. Eddard Stark was like a son to Jon Arryn, and he was a great friend of mine. What’s more, Lady Sansa was Lady Arryn’s kin and is Robin’s closest living family, so when she asked for assistance in the North, the Vale granted it. Happily.”

Before Daenerys can reply, Davos intervenes with a gruff laugh. “Thank the gods, too. The Knights of the Vale saved us in the battle for Winterfell. Pardon my language, Your Grace, but were shit out of luck until they rode in.”

Jon, touching Daenerys’s hand with his own, adds, “I would’ve been dead. We all would’ve, if they hadn’t arrived in time.”

“Then I am very glad to hear that they did. I thank you, Lord Royce, for your service to Jon Snow and Lady Sansa Stark.” That sweet smile fools no one; it freezes Royce in place as she continues, “But remember that the Vale is one of _my_ kingdoms. You are not the subject of Jon Snow. You are not the subject of Sansa Stark. You are _my_ subject.”

Yohn Royce bristles, his mouth snapping open, and the fragile pleasantness of Daenerys’s evening seems like to burst any moment, until, just down the table, a head turns and a pair of Tully blue eyes flash in their direction. It’s only a moment, but it’s enough. Royce’s shoulders stiffen, but he nods once, murmurs “Your Grace” to Daenerys, and returns silently to his seat.

Unfortunately, no one’s glare has the power to stop Lyanna Mormont. One of the last heads of house to speak with Daenerys, Lyanna approaches with no intention of having her mind changed about the dragon queen. Glowering and sour, she steps forward and, before Davos or Jon have the chance to introduce her, she announces, “I have sworn to know no king _or queen_ in the North but one named Stark.”

Daenerys’s laugh tinkles and she asks, “And who are you, little girl?” It’s condescending, not angry.

Lyanna doesn’t waver. “I am Lady Lyanna Mormont of Bear Island.”

For the first time, Daenerys’s smile falters, and she turns first to Jon, then to Ser Jorah, seated somewhat out of reach, as if they are playing a trick on her. Mormont can’t possibly know what she wants just from the look she gives him, but he rises immediately.

“The lady is Ser Jorah’s cousin, Your Grace,” says Davos, just as Mormont arrives.

“Ah, there you are, my old bear. It seems I am meeting your charming cousin.” 

A long moment passes, wherein Mormont takes stock of Lyanna, a girl he can’t possibly have known before his banishment, before he nods in response to Daenerys’s curious gaze. “I had heard the head of House Mormont was but a child,” he says slowly. He looks at Lyanna again. “I am sorry about your mother.”

Daenerys leans in, and, sounding every bit the older sister or the gossiping friend, as if she were offering advice to Missandei instead of addressing a potential political adversary, she says, “Lady Lyanna. Did you know that Ser Jorah has pledged himself to me? Is he not the rightful head of the house of Mormont?”

Jon notices Mormont’s uneasiness, but Daenerys does not, too busy meeting Lyanna’s hard black eyes. Lyanna, for her part, seems unwilling to dignify Daenerys’s question with a response; her lip curls in disgust, and she doesn’t say a word.

Good girl, Jon can’t help but think. Except that he has to keep Daenerys happy, and this will not make her happy.

It isn’t only power that Daenerys craves, Jon knows. She is no Cersei Lannister, no Petyr Baelish. What she wants, more than anything, is to be loved — loved until she drowns in it, loved more than anyone has ever been loved before. He recognizes the kind of longing that comes when you are granted something you were once starved of. He felt it himself, when Sansa fell into his arms at Castle Black, and later, when she told him that to her he was a Stark, and just hours ago, when he kissed her until he was dizzy with it.

Daenerys came to Westeros needing people to adore her. She’s come to Winterfell believing she has Jon’s love, thinking that she can win the love of his family and his people. She needs them to love her, like her Ser Jorah does, like her Missandei and her Grey Worm and her Unsullied do. Like her dragons do: fiercely and violently and forever.

Jon must try to keep her happy, but he cannot make anyone love her. Not even himself.

All at once Arya slides into Davos’s vacated chair, mischief in her eyes and half of a roll stuffed in her mouth. “Jorah Mormont,” she says, once she’s (mostly) swallowed the chunk of bread, “was disowned by his father and banished by mine for his participation in the slave trade.” Reaching past Jon’s plate, Arya swipes his mug of ale and, before he can object, takes a long swig. Over the lip of the glass, she says, “You’re known as the Breaker of Chains, aren’t you? So I’m sure you’d never take a girl’s rightful claim in order to reinstate a slaver. You’re too noble for something like that, aren’t you, Your Grace?” 

Brave, foolish Arya. She takes one more drink and, setting the mug down with a thump, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and _grins_.

Jon’s heart constricts in a moment of pure terror, but he keeps his hand firmly on Daenerys’s knee and wills her not to do anything rash. If she tries to hurt Arya, he will kill her. He’ll have to. But she is still surrounded by her soldiers. It would be a bloodbath.

But then Jorah says, “Khaleesi. Lady Lyanna is the rightful heir to my house. It is no longer my place. My place is at your side.”

Daenerys stays silent for a long moment, before an expression of benevolence blooms across her face. “Lady Lyanna,” she says serenely, “it has been a delight to meet you,” and Lyanna, sensing her dismissal, offers one last sneer before she takes her seat.

“Northern girls are quite something,” Daenerys says, turning to Jon. “I think you might’ve warned me.”

“I told you about Arya. But you will win them over, and you’ll know they mean it when you do.”

“Perhaps,” she says, but her tone is clipped and she calls Missandei over to occupy her for the rest of the meal.

Finally, as the feast begins to wind down, Daenerys rises to her feet once more and waits for the hall to fall silent. She basks in the attention, lifting her head high and saying nothing until every voice has stopped, every clatter of glasses and note of music. She is in no hurry.

Only when she is satisfied that all eyes are on her does she speak. “I am Daenerys Targaryen.” It’s not the first time she’s said it tonight, but for once she has left her list of titles unspoken. She’s learned _something_ , then. “Contrary to what you may have heard, I am not here to enslave you! I am not here to burn you! I have come from across the sea to destroy your enemies. I have come to free you from Cersei Lannister’s rule and to defeat the creatures beyond the Wall. I have come _for you_ , because Westeros is my home and you my are people and I want to put an end to these years of suffering and war.”

She has more to say, it is clear, but she pauses, letting a stretch of nervous silence fill the room, allowing them to imagine what she will say next. They all know that she once gave a choice: kneel or die.

Finally, when the air has grown thick with discomfort, she says, “I do not ask you to pledge yourselves today.” Her gaze flickers to Jon for but a moment. “But the man you call king has pledged himself to me. I am the queen he has chosen — no one else. Because I will be the one to bring an end to the long night and lead us into the light. I have brought magic back to the world. I have brought dragons back. I bring miracles, and I will save you all.”

He looks down the long table once more to find Sansa watching him, steely-eyed and determined, the slant of her mouth telling him that something must be done. The minute nod she gives him a sign that she needs his help. But before Jon can respond with a nod of his own, Daenerys is turning to back to him with a beatific smile that he must pretend holds no horror.

* * *

As she prepares to retire to her chambers, Daenerys slides her hand up his thigh and murmurs, “Will you come to me tonight?”

“I can’t,” he says. He tries to sound regretful. “Not tonight.”

* * *

After the feast has ended and all of the lights in the hall have been doused, Jon finds his way to Sansa’s door. Ghost sleeps sprawled in front of the door, an enormous white shadow that lifts its head when he approaches. “Hello, boy,” Jon says, crouching to ruffle Ghost’s fur. “You watching after her for me?”

He raises his fist to knock, but hesitates. Will she want to see him? She was crying earlier, Arya said. She has every right to turn him away.

He remembers that night outside Daenerys’s door, his stupidity and his loneliness, and then shakes his head to banish the memory. That’s not what he’s here for. That’s not —

But before he can finish the thought, the door cracks open and a hand reaches out to physically pull him inside.

“What?” He blinks. “Brienne?”

It is not only Brienne: an odd party has gathered in Sansa’s solar, standing around the fireplace and looking grim. Arya is there, which makes sense, and Bran as well, but Gilly sits by the fire wrapped in a shawl, her child on her lap and Sam standing behind her with his hand on her shoulder, and Sandor Clegane is crouched by the hearth, watching the flames, and _gods_ , Tyrion Lannister is sitting comfortable as you please at Sansa’s desk, and somehow, even more strangely, just beside him is his brother Jaime Lannister.

And then there is Sansa, standing before a looking glass and smoothing down her hair. She’s still in her gray gown (are all of her gowns gray now? he thinks he would like to see her in color), but she’s plucked some of the pins from her hair, and he can tell from the stocking-clad foot peeking out from beneath the hem of the dress that she’s slipped out of her shoes. When she notices his reflection in the mirror, she whirls. “Jon!”

“What are you doing?” he asks, too loudly. There’s a flush on her cheeks. Maybe the wine. Maybe the heat of the fire. He forces himself to look around. “What are you all doing? This is — ” He grasps for words. “I think this isn’t really appropriate.”

At that, Arya snorts, and even kind Brienne looks at him as if he’s a bit of an idiot, so he lowers his voice and finds the words for what he really means to say. “Whatever you’re doing, to Daenerys this will look like treason.”

Tyrion shrugs and says, “Daenerys need never know about this little meeting. Our friend the Spider has very generously agreed to make certain she stays in her room for the night, and to ensure that nobody inconvenient reports back to her that we were here. And that beast of yours seems to be doing an admirable job keeping visitors away — yourself excluded.”

“I thought … ” He finds Sansa’s eyes again, but she looks away.

“We need to discuss this war,” Jaime Lannister says impatiently. “Wars. If what you say is coming is coming, then there is no time for queens to clash over titles. And I’ve seen what your dragon queen will do. She will raze the continent if that’s what it takes.” He grimaces. "Cersei too."

Jon pinches his nose and tries to make sense of — of anything, really. “If you’re here,” he says slowly, “does that mean your sister has sent her forces?”

Arya snorts again, which is all the answer Jon needs, but Jaime’s eyes darken and he says, “I’m sorry.”

Of course it’s no less than Jon expected of Cersei Lannister — after all Sansa told him, he knew she wasn’t a woman to be trusted — but it’s a problem, not only because the manpower would have made a difference, but because now there is nothing stopping Daenerys from flying off with her remaining dragons and taking King’s Landing by force. Nothing except whatever this room full of people can come up with.

“Ser Jaime arrived a mere day before your party,” Sansa says. She twists her hands in front of her for a moment before she catches herself and straightens them at her sides. “I decided, given Cersei’s betrayal and Jaime’s particular relationship to Daenerys, that it would be best to keep him out of sight, for now.”

Jon almost groans. Of course. Jaime is not only the harbinger of Cersei’s broken pledge, but he is also the killer of Daenerys’s father. He can only imagine what she would’ve done if she’d been greeted by the Kingslayer when she stepped through the gates of Winterfell.

“And Daenerys’s Hand is here because … ?”

Brienne sighs. “Jaime insisted that his brother be informed of his presence.”

“I thought it was too risky,” admits Sansa, “but Tyrion agrees that we need to refocus Daenerys’s efforts on the battle to the north.”

Tyrion shoots a cheeky grin at Sansa, which she returns with a sweet smile, and says, “No offense taken at your distrust, my lady. But I thank you for letting me speak with my brother.”

An impatient noise escapes Jon and when Sansa turns back to him, still faintly pink, he can’t help but ask sharply, “And you’ve all gathered here for tea and cakes, I s’pose?”

Tyrion almost laughs at him, and the Hound turns away from the flames long enough to roll his eyes, but it’s Sansa, of course, whose expression arrests him. Her cheeks have grown brighter, a flush that creeps down her neck, and in her eyes gleams something sharp and utterly infuriating. Oh. She is _angry_.

Before he can explain himself, she snaps, “What, Jon, do you think you’re the only one who here who can strategize?”

Jon steps closer, unwilling, unable, to break from her burning gaze. “Of course n— ”

“You’re the only one who can handle your dragon queen?”

“I don’t — ” 

“Do you think you’re the only one who’s trying to fix this mess?”

He exhales a long, tired sigh. “Sansa. It’s not your mess to fix.”

But she just raises her eyebrows at him, pointed in a way that makes his gut twist. “Isn’t it?”

His breathing has gone ragged, his heart racing and his blood up as if he's been in battle, and it is only then that he realizes that he didn’t just take a step or two toward Sansa: he’s crossed the room to where she stands panting before him, within arm’s reach. Her chest heaves, and her tongue darts out to wet her lips.

He staggers backward and tries not to notice the way both of the Lannisters are watching him. Arya only looks confused, thank the gods, and he can only imagine how transparent he is to Brienne, who has seen him with Sansa since the beginning. 

Clearing his throat, Jon turns his back to Sansa and fights down the heat sweeping through his stomach. He catches the wariness on Gilly’s face before he notices that Sam is watching him — Sam, who knows him as well as anyone could, who must know what he feels, and Jon weathers his disappointed frown until the sick taste of guilt chokes him and he has to look away.

With nowhere safe left to turn, Jon faces the hearth where Clegane crouches. “What is _he_ doing here?”

“Oh, he’s pledged himself to Sansa,” says Arya carelessly. “He’s her sworn shield.”

“ _What_?”

Clegane rises from his haunches, turning his gruesome face down toward Jon, but all he says is, “Aye. I did. I am.”

Jon turns to Brienne on instinct, to be a voice of sanity amidst all this madness, but her expression is cold and unreadable. Oh, yes, she knows too.

It’s Bran who calls them to order, raising that new, adult voice of his that Jon cannot get used to and announcing, “There is no more time for this. The dead are coming. They are close. Daenerys Targaryen will be necessary to destroy them. She cannot fight a different war. She cannot go south.”

“I know that,” says Jon.

“She knows it too,” Tyrion says. “In her heart.”

“Her heart needs to inform the rest of her,” says Arya.

“We need only to find a temporary solution,” says Tyrion. “We can iron out the more difficult details if we’re alive to do it. I still think marriage is the way.”

“Marriage.” Jon tries to keep the horror from his voice.

Tyrion continues, “I assume we are all up to date on the issue of Jon Snow being a secret Targaryen prince hidden away for years by the apparently just-as-honorable-as-he-seemed Ned Stark. Am I getting that right, Maester Tarly?”

“Yes, well.” Sam coughs. “I’m not a Maester, actually. You see — ”

“Jon is the rightful heir of the Seven Kingdoms,” Bran interrupts. It’s just as chilling hearing it now as it was the first time. Whatever foolish dreams Jon may have had as a boy, he never imagined _this_. He never wanted this. “He is the legitimate child of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, who secretly married before Robert killed Rhaegar at the Trident.”

Even for those who already knew, hearing it aloud seems to have shocked them into silence. Arya’s got her brow furrowed like she’s preparing to turn her sword on the whole idea of it, and Sam, color rising in his cheeks, looks helplessly at Jon. Sansa, who’s come to stand beside Brienne, sinks her teeth into the plump of her lip and watches him, her blue eyes piercing him every time her gaze passes over his face. 

Finally Jaime Lannister lets out a low whistle. “Crown prince to bastard boy and all the way back again. Impressive, Snow.”

Bran says, “His name is Aegon Targary— ”

“My name is Jon Snow. And as I told Daenerys, I don’t want the Iron Throne. I don’t want to rule. I will renounce any claim you may think I have. I don’t want anything except … ” He shakes his head and curses himself. “I don’t want anything except the end to these wars.”

Stiffly, Sansa says, “The queen is aware of your circumstances?”

“I told her.”

“And she did not agree to … your proposal?”

Damn it all. There are too many people in the room for this conversation. “It’s complicated,” Jon says. “There are a lot of factors.”

Arya makes a retching sound like she might’ve done when she was ten, and it would warm his heart were it not for the situation. “Gross,” she says. “You’re going to marry her?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s gross,” Arya repeats. Then, with a sudden predatorial turn toward Tyrion, that funny little sister of his vanishing into this _thing_ that he can barely recognize, she says, “Imp, you need to tell your queen that she is a greedy, power-hungry — ”

“Arya!” He hears the spike of panic in Sana’s tone, but Arya just grins. “My apologies, Lord Tyrion. To both you and your queen.”

Tyrion waves it off. “I’ve heard worse, you know that.” He folds his arms on top of the desk and leans forward over them. “But listen to me, all of you. I believe in Daenerys. I really do. However, it also true that she needs guidance at times. She can be impulsive. She makes mistakes. She — ” 

“Burns people alive,” someone says in a rough, high voice, and everyone gapes with astonishment when they realize that it came from Gilly. Quiet wildling Gilly, with a sleeping toddler on her knee and the bravery to speak in anger to a Lannister. After a moment, she bites her lip and begins to turn toward Sam, half-apologetic, but he rubs his hand over her shoulder and meets Tyrion’s gaze evenly.

“She burns people alive.”

Jon hadn’t let Mance die that way, and he’d banished Melisandre for murdering a child like that. Even if he’d never liked a thing he heard of Randall Tarly, even if he hated him for how he’d treated Sam, no man deserves to burn. Isn’t that what humanity is?

“They’re right, little brother,” says Jaime Lannister. “I won’t sit and watch another madman burn human beings alive for entertainment.”

Tyrion shifts uncomfortably, his mild grin transforming into something of a grimace. “Yes. I advised her against it. I am sorry. She doesn’t do it for entertainment, that I am certain of, but it isn’t a just way to rule nevertheless.” He allows a moment to pass, but only a moment, and then says, “But Daenerys has three — two — full-grown dragons, and in truth, she’d need only Drogon to take Westeros. She _will_ be the queen. There is no other way for this story to end. So if you have your doubts, if you would like to make sure that she rules as justly and as nobly as I believe she is capable of doing, then it would be better to seek her friendship so that you may earn her trust.”

“You have her trust.” Clegane nods at Tyrion with something like disgust. “Does she listen to you?”

“Sometimes yes,” Tyrion admits. “Sometimes no. She thought it would be easier to take Westeros, and it’s left her a bit more headstrong than usual. It will fade, once her kingdom is secure.”

There’s a soft, breathy sound that’s almost lost beneath the the crackle of the fire, and Jon knows that it’s Sansa laughing, but it’s not a warm laugh. “No kingdom is ever secure, Lord Tyrion. You know that.” But then she sighs and says, “Tell me truly. Will she take the North?”

Tyrion frowns. “Yes. One way or another.”

“And if we do not readily agree to give her the North, will she abandon us to our enemies?”

“No,” he says, firmly. “I don’t believe her capable of such a thing. She lost her own dragon to what is coming. She won’t soon forget.”

“If she learns of Cersei’s treachery, will she fly south and take King’s Landing by force? Will she prioritize her claim over our fight to survive?”

“I don’t — I hope not. I would advise her against it. We all would. And if she had some proof of the North’s loyalty to her … ”

Sansa’s feet pad softly as she passes Brienne, and, crossing the room with a weary shake of head, she leans nearer to Tyrion. “You have an idea. What do you have in mind?”

“Marriage.”

“Whose?”

Tyrion’s head tilts, and Jon’s vision tilts, and he has to stop this now, right now, before it can never be fixed. “Yours.”

With his best Lord Commander voice, Jon says, “Enough of this. We know our goal. We must find a way to bind Daenerys to the North without giving her absolute control. We must keep her focused on the war against the dead. It is the only war that matters.” He fixes Tyrion with a piercing look, “And if she wants to win the North to her side, a surer route would be to save their lives than to arrange a marriage. _Any_ marriage.”

Tyrion raises his hands in surrender, but he says, “As you may recall, we don’t have a lot of time to make this work. When do you plan to lead your soldiers into battle?”

Given that Jon has spent the past two days sorting through the shattered foundations of his life, he doesn’t have a ready answer. Of course they’d talked about it on the road from White Harbor. Of course time is of the essence. He’s not a fool. But to organize soldiers, battle plans, supply lines, food rations, the castle’s defense — it cannot be done at a moment’s notice.

He opens his mouth to say something, but Bran speaks first: “Three days.”

Three days?

“The long night will be here soon. Daenerys Targaryen must fly her dragons North in three days. She will face the ice dragon. She must defeat him, or there’s no hope.” Bran’s eyes are flat and unsettling. “Three days.”

“He’s right,” says Clegane. “The dead are marching. A dragon flies above them.”

“Oh, they have a dragon too?” says Jaime with something like bravado, but he can’t quite pull it off. “Well, you heard the boy. No time to waste.”

Three days.

Sansa, stepping forward, says, “This is the fight that matters right now. Jon has always said that we must focus on the fight for the living, and he’s right. If Daenerys can’t see that, then we shall give her something she wants.” It isn’t her loveliness that captivates him so much as it is the depth of her eyes, the feeling of being known that she can give him with just the twitch of her lips, the hum of her voice. “Sometimes you have to give something of yourself to survive.” She looks at him. “Sometimes that’s the only move left. We will give Daenerys something she truly wants.” She looks down at Tyrion. “So what does she truly want? Does she want Jon or does she want the North?”

* * *

As everyone begins to shuffle out of the room, Jon approaches Sam, who eyes him warily but still smiles. Gilly’s gone with Sansa into the next room to help Sansa remove the last few pins from her hair, so Sam has little Sam scooped against his chest, the boy’s chin tucked under his chin.

“It’s late,” Jon says, nodding at the child. “You didn’t have to come.”

“Bran told me I ought to, and then Gilly wanted to come, to support Sansa. She says she doesn’t like it how often Sansa’s the only woman in the room. I think Gilly forgets about Lady Brienne. And your sister.” He laughs nervously. “And I do have things to say. About Daenerys Targaryen. About the kind of queen I think she’ll be.”

Jon’s weak smile fades. “Of course you do.”

The little boy begins to fuss and Sam sways gently, rubbing circles into the boy’s back. His voice drops to something low and soothing and indistinct, not offering words so much as reassurance. Sam is a good father. Jon wonders if, in some other life, he could have been a good father.

Something twinges in Jon’s chest and he forces his mind away from the thought.

“Why didn’t you bring your Hand?” Sam asks, after the boy’s settled again.

“Davos? I — I s’pose I didn’t think to. I didn’t realize … ” He shakes his head.

Lowering his voice even more, Sam asks, “Jon … why did you come here tonight? You didn’t expect us all to be here. What did you expect?”

Jon says Sam’s name and it comes out like a plea.

Sam frowns. “It was only yesterday you found out.”

“It’s not what you think, Sam. Not exactly.” He’s so turned around that he doesn’t even know if he’s telling the truth. What does Sam think? What does Jon feel? What did he come to this room wanting? “ _Please_.”

“You’re my brother, Jon. Nothing will change that. But I’m worried. For you, for all of us. For your— for Lady Stark too. I don’t want to see you end up like Dickon, and I don’t want to see her end up like your Ygritte. I want to live long enough to know the kind of person Little Sam is going to be. I want to have a baby with Gilly. A daughter. We could name her Melessa, after my mother. Or anything Gilly wanted.” Sam presses a kiss to his son’s head. “But I can’t do that if we’re all killed by monsters. Fire or ice, it doesn’t matter. We’re dead either way.”

With a nod, Jon squeezes Sam’s shoulder in thanks, in love, and he knows for all the horrors that he has endured since he went to the Wall, meeting this man, this _brother_ , has been one of the best parts of his life.

Gilly returns, giving Jon a strange look. When Jon makes to follow her and Sam out the door, she says, “You should stay.”

Before he can ask, a voice calls from the adjacent bedroom: “Wait a moment, Jon, will you? We need to speak.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, as you can see, this is now chapter 3 of 4 because I'm terrible at pacing. It's honestly beyond ridiculous that all 30k of this fic so far takes place over about 36 hours. Sorry!
> 
> Anyway, god willing, I will wrap things up in the next chapter, which should hopefully come a lot sooner than this one did now that classes & teaching are over for the summer. (Grad school is like ... a lot of work. Who knew?) Also, for once I don't have a song inspiration for this chapter and honestly maybe that's part of what made it such a slog to write. I really gotta curate my Jonsa playlist.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Sansa can't stop getting in their own way, and Daenerys makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone for their extremely generous feedback over the months. I haven't been good about responding but please know I read and appreciate every single comment. This story became a surprisingly unwieldy monster, and all of your comments and encouragement have ensured that working on this kept being rewarding and fun. Jonsa fandom -- you're a delight!

Even over the heavy sough of the wind outside the castle, Jon can hear Sansa in the adjacent room. The sounds she's making are delicate, so soft he instinctively holds his breath: her padding feet, the open and close of a cabinet door, the shallow tap of something being set down on a table. She’s humming too, an absentminded and fragmentary tune that fades in and out as she makes Jon wait.

He listens and pretends that he is not listening, and when, eventually, her voice comes, it surprises him. “Will it work?”

She's returned to the solar, dressed -- or rather, undressed -- for bed. Her white dressing gown, cinched at the waist, reveals an inverted triangle of pale skin beneath the column of her neck, and her unbound hair falls over her shoulders in dark copper waves that shine in the firelight. One lock, loose and long, has separated from the rest; it trails over her collarbone and curls between her breasts.

“Wh— ” He shakes himself, wrenching his eyes back to her face before she can notice how low they’ve dropped. But of course her face, pink-cheeked, pink-lipped, does little to slow his racing heart. “Sorry, what?”

“Promising her the North.” She says it slowly, as if he’s dull-witted, which, all things considered, he supposes he is. “Telling her we will bend the knee once the White Walkers have been defeated. Will she agree?”

Yes, this had been the solution ultimately proposed by the Lannisters: a gambit that would give them room to maneuver once the war was done. The promise to make a promise, once the people of Westeros were safe, once the Northerners saw that they owed Daenerys their survival. _Then_ Jon and Sansa would kneel at Daenerys’s feet, and the whole of the North would follow and call her their queen.

At least that’s what they will tell her. _Maybe by then_ , Jaime Lannister had said darkly to his brother, _you’ll be able to convince me she isn’t her father come again._

Maybe by then, they will find a way to temper her fury, to teach her to rule with more than fire and blood.

Sighing, Jon admits, “I don’t know. I already bent the knee once … ”

“But you haven’t. You never actually knelt. These pledges have meanings, you know that. They have forms they must take to be binding.”

It’s true, of course, and the thought had crossed his mind in that moment too, but he doubts Daenerys will care about a loophole — she’s shown precious little interest in the customs or culture of Westeros thus far. Her _people_ , though, might feel differently, and Tyrion had assured them he'd do what he could to get her to agree.

He digs the heels of his palms into his forehead, letting his eyes droop closed for a blessed moment of peace. This morning’s headache has never quite left him.

“We need only satisfy her until she flies north.” 

Her voice is much closer than he expected, so close that his stomach flips, as if he’s a green boy on the eve of battle, or speaking to a woman for the first time. Against his better judgment, he looks at her, and then he has to look away.

All those evenings they spent in each other’s company, reminiscing and planning and filling the time with sweet, easy silence, her hair loose over her shoulders as she sewed, when he would wish that it were that red silk beneath his hands, instead of armory inventories, updates on weapons training, some letter or another that he was meant to write — all those evenings and she always sat in the chair opposite his, in his sights but never within his grasp. 

But now she stands at his side, all but leaning into his chair, close enough for him to pinch the fabric of her dressing gown between his thumb and finger, if he dared. Close enough that he can see that the gown is not white, as he’d imagined, but the palest of blues, the color of eggs he and Bran once found at the base of a tree in the Wolfswood. The nest had fallen from a tree branch, the mother bird nowhere to be seen.

The hairs on the back of his neck prick up, sensing her hand hovering over his shoulder blade before he feels the light touch of her fingers on the back of his neck, sliding up to sink into his hair. He suppresses a shiver. “If a promise will make her happy … ” she muses, and tightens her grip ever so slightly, but it's enough to make him look up at her. There is steel in her gaze, her eyes so deep he could drown in them. So deep he almost wants to. He is reminded of the other times she has touched him, catching his hand, demanding he listen to her. She's had him wrapped around her finger for a long time. “And it is a promise we may not even keep,” she says meaningfully.

It takes him longer than it should for him to find his voice. “You can't really think she'll let us break a promise like this without consequences.”

“I _think_ ,” Sansa says sharply, her mouth flattening into a hard line, “that even another week’s reprieve may give me time to think of something.” Her hand slips free of his hair and returns to her side. She flexes it, once, as if it's sore. “I thought, I had hoped, maybe if you married her — but nothing will come of it?"

She takes her usual seat across from him now, the staid expression alerting him to the fact that she is not Sansa now: she is the Lady of Winterfell, and they have business to discuss.

Fine. Business it is then.

“I asked her,” he says. “I tried to make her see the sense in it, but she wouldn’t bend on the issue of the North’s independence.” He chooses his next words carefully. “She did agree to marry me, but her council is against it.”

She makes a small, thoughtful noise, as if she's turning it over in her mind, but she's watching him too closely. She says, “I thought so. There was something Tyrion said.” Her voice changes. “That _my_ marriage — ”

“Sansa.” It's a warning.

“I assumed someone would suggest I marry Tyrion again, but that's not it, is it?” It’s not a real question, though, because she barrels on, “No, that's not it at all. They think — ”

“Don’t.”

He doesn’t miss the flinch that she tries to suppress. He curses himself.

“You won’t even hear it?”

What can he say? That he cannot imagine a punishment more cruel than Sansa agreeing to marry him because there is no other way, because it suits Daenerys’s plans? That he would rather die than become yet another man who is foisted upon her, trying to steal her claim and her name and her dignity all at once?

Or, worse yet, that the idea filled him with as much longing as it did horror? No, there is no good answer, so he stays quiet.

Sansa won't heed his silence, however; the cool, regal mask he knows so well may only flicker for just a moment, but it's long enough for him to see her irritation.

“What would you choose?” she asks, a sharpness to her words that wasn't there before. “If it was your choice, and not hers. Would you choose the North — ” _I’ll always choose the North_ , he wants to say, but then she continues: “ — or would you choose me?”

He sucks in a ragged breath, his chest going tight, but she’s not finished. “I chose the North. I did my duty, as I have always done. I told you to marry your dragon queen and save our people and protect our kingdom. Nothing else seemed to make sense.” She looks down at her hands, folded primly in her lap. “But if there’s another option — ”

“It’s _not_ an option,” he manages to spit out. “I swear, no one is forcing you into another marriage.” He douses his anger as best he can; she’s not the one he’s angry with. It’s himself, and it’s Daenerys and Tyrion and Varys, and it’s Rhaegar Targaryen and it’s Lyanna Stark, and it’s his father, too, the father that is her father as well, the father that was never truly his.

“I won't let them do this to you.” Sam’s earlier warnings still fresh in his mind, he adds, “And I don’t want to give Daenerys more reasons to see you as her rival. Your survival, it’s all that matters. You and Arya and Bran. That’s the only thing I care about.”

“What about me?” Her hands have tightened into fists on her knees. “What about what I care about? Have you ever thought to ask me that?” She leans forward in her seat, so that he catches another glimpse of her cleavage that makes him go hot and cold all over, and then she hisses, “You don’t want Daenerys to see me as a rival. But am I? Am I her rival, Jon?”

“You’re — ” He looks past her. “You’re the queen the North wants.”

“That’s not what I'm asking.”

He groans and pushes himself out of his seat before he does something stupid. He can’t be this close to her. He can’t look at her as she says these things. On the other side of the room, he can breathe again. The view from the window is bleak but calming, beautiful even, the landscape gleaming silver in the moonlight. Hard to believe that death awaits him just beyond the horizon — that death is marching for him, for all of them.

If he’s going to die, why shouldn’t he take what happiness he can from this life? If he’s going to die, does his honor matter? Does Sansa’s?

But these are thoughts he cannot have, not here of all places, in the room where Ned and Catelyn Stark slept and made love and built the family that Jon and his selfish desires can only contaminate.

“What do you want me to say, Sansa? You’re my sister.”

“I’m not.”

She’s standing now too, so he takes another step back, keeping her far enough away that he can’t smell the rosewater on her skin or see the fan of her eyelashes in excruciating detail. The fire burning behind her casts her in an otherworldly glow, reminding him that she was never meant to be his. That she is impossible to touch. 

He can think straight, with her over there.

“You are,” he says. “Or you were until last night. And still I — ” He breaks off, lowers his voice. It’s not her fault that he is this broken thing. “It’s wrong. I’m wrong. I shouldn't have touched you. It shouldn’t have been so easy to touch you.”

“And me?” There's something defiant in her voice. “Is there something wrong with me?”

“No, of course not.”

Her mouth quirks, more muted than a smile, but gods it makes him _ache_. As a girl, she'd been prone to big displays of emotion: ringing laughter, wide and white-toothed smiles, loud sobs and high-pitched shrieks. Now she is a study in subtlety. He is still learning all the little ways she allows herself to be known.

She says, “But I kissed you too. You’d only just told me the truth and still I kissed you.”

 _She did_ , he thinks, remembering the taste of her tongue on his lips, how she sighed so sweetly into his mouth. But he shakes his head. It’s not the same.

“You didn’t know what you were doing,” he says.

He knows at once it's the wrong thing to say: all of the color drains from her face and the almost-smile she'd offered him has disappeared. “You’re an ass.” Her voice is clipped and cold. “I’ve been kissed before. Maybe even more than you have. I’m not a _child_.”

“That’s not what I meant! I know you're not a child.” Why can’t she see that he trying to do what is best for her? He’s doing everything he can to _protect her_. 

“Then stop treating me like one.” 

He makes a noise, a growl almost, and her eyes widen. “I know that men have touched you,” he says, jaw tightening. “Fuckers who didn’t deserve to look at you or talk to you or have your name in their rotten mouths. And gods, Sansa, I would cut their hands off if I could, every last one of ‘em.” She’s gone tense, still and wary as a cat eyeing its prey. He tries to speak more gently. “But you’ve never been touched with love before,” he says. “You don’t know what it means.”

Lips hardening into a flat line, she folds back into herself, carefully, the way she had the night before the battle for Winterfell, when she’d said, _You can’t protect me_. He should’ve listened.

“You must think I am truly stupid.” He hasn't heard bitterness like this in her voice for a long time; it scrapes at some part inside him he thought was numb, maybe even dead. “I’ve been touched with love before today. _You’ve_ touched me with love before today.” She pins him in place with just a look, before she adds, “Not the love of a brother. And I know exactly what it means.”

He wants to say it isn’t true. That when he held her, pulling her tight to his chest, and when he touched his lips to her forehead, her hairline, her cheek, he had only cared for her as Robb might have. That he never dreamed of her in ways that flooded him with shame, and when Daenerys moaned beneath him he never imagined, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he was somewhere else, with someone else. He wants to tell her that he never would’ve broken her trust like that, taking pleasure — and pain, too — in the thought of her not as his sister, but as a woman.

He wants to tell her she’s wrong, but when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out.

“I know what love is,” she says. 

It’s not what he expected. It’s almost a whisper when she says it, and, with the words, all of her armor falls away. The fight goes out of her. She looks tired, and young, and terribly sad. 

She tells him, “I didn’t realize. Not at first. Not until Littlefinger told me that he suspected you planned to marry Daenerys. The way he said it … I knew he was testing me, but I didn’t understand how.” There’s something wry in the way she says it, that damned smirking irony that Jon can only associate with Petyr Baelish. “He was an awful man,” Sansa says, “but he saw it before I did.”

She lifts her chin and presses on: “He knew that I loved you.”

In his dreams, when she said she loved him, he’d held her in her arms, pressed his mouth to her mouth and to her neck and to her cunt. He’d said it back a thousand times, a thousand more, whispered it into every inch of her skin, drew the words through her hair like a comb. _I love you, I love you, I love you. More than anything. More than I can stand. More than I can ever say._ In his dreams there was joy and lust and shame and hope, and all he wanted was for her to know that he adored her.

But in this moment, his ears ring like the time Robb accidentally knocked the back of his skull with one of the training swords. All of his words are dead on his tongue. He thinks, perhaps, he has never been so afraid.

Sansa’s still halfway across the room, out of his reach, her hands twisting into each other, her steady gaze beginning to falter. She bites her lip, wraps her arms around herself. “I— I see.” Her voice cracks, so she clears her throat, and says more steadily, “It’s all right. We’ll find another way.” 

She smiles. He hates that smile, the one that comes too easily. The one she gave to those she couldn’t trust. 

In a light voice, she is saying, “I’ll explain to Tyrion that you ought to marry Daenerys after all. With you at her side, perhaps she will see reason and allow the North some freedom, at least. You’ll make a good husband.” She’s looking past him now, her eyes suddenly flat and unfathomable. “With time you might even make her a gentler queen.”

He needs to say something, _say anything_ , before she turns away, but terror has him in its grip. He could lose her. He’s known it for months now, known it since he first let her out of his arms that day at Castle Black, and yet he never allowed himself to truly _feel_ it. Evil itself is his sworn enemy and winter is at their doorstep and dragons wait just beyond the Wolfswood — and he could lose Sansa to any of it, and he’s not certain, not really, that he could keep going. Not even for Bran and Arya, not even for the fate of the world. To have Sansa and then to lose her. It is a pain beyond imagining. It is a horror for which he could never prepare.

He’s kissed her, once, and it carved him down to the bone. Could he survive taking her to bed, calling her his wife? Could her survive knowing how it felt to be loved by her and then having that love ripped from him forever?

“It’s late,” Sansa says, pulling her dressing gown more tightly around her, her fingers clenched in the pale fabric. She won’t look at him. “You ought to go now. We’ll both need sleep for the day ahead.”

She ushers him to her door and all but pushes him through it, so that he stumbles over Ghost, who’s still sitting guard. Jon’s surprise — and the direwolf’s indignation — makes him realize a moment too late that Sansa is saying goodnight, that’s she’s begun to close the door, and she will go to bed tonight thinking that Jon doesn’t love her.

“Wait,” he says, not knowing what word will follow it, but it’s enough to make Sansa pause in the doorway. His hands are burning to touch her.

Before he can say anything, however, they both hear the sound of footsteps pounding through the corridors, the stamp of boots echoing in the night’s silence. Jon whirls, unsheathing Longclaw and calling over his shoulder for Sansa to lock herself in her room, but when the men round the corner he recognizes them: a handful of Winterfell's guards, led by a red-faced Ser Davos Seaworth, who has to take a moment to catch his breath.

“My Lord,” he pants. Jon doesn’t miss the confused glance he sends past Jon, to where Sansa still stands half-dressed at the door to her solar. “My Lady. It’s the dragons. They’re here.”

* * *

By the time Sansa joins them on the battlements, Daenerys’s party has already arrived, seemingly unperturbed by the night’s disruption. The dragons have come. Those hoisting Targaryen banners do not appear to mind.

Some among the group show a little surprise when Sansa approaches, Brienne at her side. Varys's eyebrows lift ever-higher and Jorah Mormont blinks slowly, throwing a questioning glance to Tyrion. They did not expect her to be here, Jon realizes. They did not really imagine that Winterfell belonged to her, and that matters of such import as dragons would fall under her purview.

Tyrion shows no sign of surprise, however, and, to Jon's annoyance, it is he who first greets Sansa, calling out, “My dear Lady Stark, we are terribly sorry for troubling you this evening.”

Sansa must’ve dressed hastily: beneath her favored sable cloak, she’s wearing the thick wool dress Jon had purchased for her in Molestown, terribly plain and more simple than most of her newer dresses, and she’s only braided back the front of her hair, the way she and Arya used to wear it when they were young girls. Behind her, Brienne has a wary look, her eyes already beginning to scan the dark sky.

“No trouble, my lord,” Sansa says, gracious as ever, but she too cannot keep her eyes from straying upward. “I wanted to be here.”

The dragons, circling in the darkness, still take Jon’s breath away. Some part of him — the Targaryen in him, perhaps, or simply the Jon Snow that at times feels more wolf than man — understands Daenerys’s affection for her so-called children, but this makes them all the more terrifying. That which can be loved is truly dangerous, because it means someone will fight for it, someone will kill for it. She will never let go of them, not willingly, not for the safety of the realm or the good of its people.

He sneaks a glance at Sansa, whose pale face reveals no fear, though he thinks he sees her gloved hands shaking a little before she pulls them under the cloak and out of sight.

“Aren’t they magnificent?” says Daenerys, attention still fixed on the sky for a moment before she turns to Sansa, beaming.

“Yes,” Sansa says simply. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” More sweetly, she adds, “I understand now what Jon meant when he spoke to me of your power. I knew you were an impressive woman, Your Grace, but _this_ … You are truly as extraordinary as my brother said.”

Oh, Daenerys likes that. He coughs into his glove to avoid her heated gaze.

Davos, edging toward Daenerys, clears his throat. “Your Grace,” he begins carefully, and Jon catches the wary look Tyrion directs toward Davos. “I’d thought we’d agree that it would be best to keep the dragons away from Winterfell, so that the Northerners do not take them to be a threat.”

“ _The Northerners_ need persuading,” she says, sounding more bored than irate. She's already grown sick of the political game she's entered, that much is apparent. What need does she have for niceties or compromise when she has dragons? She gazes up at the beasts again, and it is love that shines from her face, real love, more powerful than anything she might feel for him. 

For a moment, he pities her, that these monsters are the truest love she’s ever known.

“My children are here because they knew their mother needed them,” she says, but then, strangely, the happy glow in her eyes begins to dim. “And they need me. They will always need me.” Her smile is a sad thing now, as she whispers, “Oh, look how beautiful they are.”

Tyrion seizes onto her momentary silence and sidles up to her, already attempting to coax her out of doing anything rash. Every other word of the exchange gets swept up in the wind, but from what Jon can gather, he is advising her that she must find a way to introduce the dragons to the Northerners peacefully, as agents of their liberation, not tools of their oppression. As if a few pretty words will blind Jon's people to the reality before them. The dragons are a knife to the throat: only a fool would see them as anything else.

Jon turns to Davos and murmurs in a low voice, “How am I s’posed to explain this to the bannermen? I’m not just a Targaryen who’s bent the knee to a Targaryen, now I’ve gone and brought actual dragons to Winterfell.”

Davos looks pensive and doesn’t bother to say he hasn’t got a clue.

“I think,” says Sansa in a bright voice, “it’s a wonderful thing that they’ve come,” and she sounds so earnest that no one, not even the mummer Lord Varys, can keep from giving her an incredulous look. No one except Grey Worm, who is solemn as ever, and Daenerys, whose strange and sudden hopefulness makes Jon feel guilty all over again for how he has used her. How he will continue to use her.

“Do you really?”

“I do, Your Grace. The North deserves to see you for what you are, and you are undoubtedly the most powerful woman in the world. I fear none of us could quite imagine it before — dragons, magic. You’ll have to forgive us. We’re an isolated people. Such wonders are new to us.”

Delighted, Daenerys claps her gloved hands together. “What a clever girl you are! I knew you’d see it my way. All these men around us trying to tell us what to do, but it’s we women who know best, hm?”

“Perhaps,” Sansa allows, “but I don’t think Jon would like me to say so. I may be the Lady of Winterfell, but he is my brother and Warden of the North. It is my duty to do as he sees best.” 

It’s only when Sansa casts her eyes down and bows her head in his direction — an uncharacteristically demure gesture, and one he’s certainly never witnessed before — that he understands what game she is playing. If Daenerys believes Sansa to be a mere puppet, eager to follow orders and loyal to Jon, then she will trust that Jon can keep his sister in line, a malleable figurehead in the North who will support Targaryen rule. Thus far Sansa has publicly shown nothing but loyalty to Jon, whatever their private disagreements. All Sansa need do is humble herself before him, and Daenerys will make the mistake of dismissing Sansa, deciding she is not a threat.

Jon does not like to think who taught Sansa to lie like this. He does not like to think about the life that has taught her to make herself so small.

Daenerys presses her hand to Sansa’s shoulder, the kind of sisterly pat of affection that she has shown Missandei countless times, before she links her arm through Sansa's. “Well, _I_ say so,” she says conspiratorially, “and Jon will simply have to live with it.”

“Very well, Your Grace. I know Jon wouldn’t dare contradict you.”

“Thank you, Sansa. You don’t mind if I call you Sansa, do you?”

Sansa bows her head again. “Please do. After all, we’re family, in a way. You are Jon’s kin and Jon is mine.”

“I am glad to hear you say so. Finally, I hear sense coming from one of you Northerners.” She leans in closer, but Jon can still hear her. He supposes he's meant to. “I must admit, your sister quite surprised me at the feast tonight.”

“Arya’s never had much in the way of manners,” Sansa says. “Please forgive her. I am trying my best to teach her these things, but she's a headstrong girl.”

“I like headstrong,” Daenerys says. “But I like smart and loyal too.” She tugs Sansa closer to the edge of the battlements, turning their backs to everyone else. Brienne shifts her weight from one foot to another and back again, nervous, ready to spring. Brienne always was a smart woman.

“I must tell you,” Jon hears Daenerys say, “I’ve been thinking … ” Daenerys's voice dips lower, inaudible now, her head tilting toward Sansa's, and after a tense moment, Sansa chimes in enthusiastically, the words unintelligible but the tone clear. Bright. Unafraid. He relaxes, a little.

But he does not trust the queen’s good spirits for long, and when his gaze flickers to Tyrion, the dwarf only grimaces at him. A moment later Jon feels Davos’s elbow dig into his side and the old man’s gruff voice at his ear: “I have a bad feeling, lad.”

Daenerys wheels back to the rest of the group, grinning broadly, with a proprietary arm around Sansa’s shoulders. “I’ve come to a decision,” she says, lifting her voice to its most queenly tone. “It is no secret that I have not been entirely happy with the welcome I’ve received from the North. However, as Sansa has so aptly said, are we not all family?”

Jon tries to swallow his uneasiness, but it’s difficult when Daenerys has that gleam in her eye, and when he cannot see Sansa’s expression at all. She has her gaze firmly fixed on her boots.

“Jon, you are loyal to me, are you not?”

Jon bobs his head. “Of course, Your Grace.”

“And Sansa, as you say, Jon is your lord and so you are loyal to him.”

“I am.”

“Good,” Daenerys says, and she looks back up to where her dragons are circling in the sky, looking like nothing so much as enormous scavenging birds, waiting to devour the carrion flesh of the North. She braces one hand on her abdomen as if to steel herself, and then nods. “Then it is my wish that you marry and continue the Targaryen line.”

Wind rushes through Jon’s ears, bitterly cold. He tries to think.

“ _What?_ ” he hears Sansa shout. She’s pulled herself out of Daenerys’s arms and her calm facade has slipped.

Veins flooding with fire, Jon can't even look at her. He feels an inarticulate, immense anger at Daenerys. She can’t demand this of him, of them. If Sansa wants … whatever Sansa wants … it must be freely chosen. It should not be like this.

“You said yourself marriage made sense,” Daenerys says to Sansa.

“Your Grace,” Sansa manages eventually, “I’m afraid that when you spoke to me just now of marriage, I thought you meant your own. To Jon.” 

She turns to Jon then, her eyes wide and pleading, and his brain starts up again. He understands all at once that she truly does not want this. She does not want to marry him. She is his brother, his family. She said she loves him, and he doesn’t doubt that it is true in some way or another, but he’ll be damned if he lets this happen. Sansa is a good liar. She will put everyone before herself, and she will tell him that this is precisely what she wants, because it is for his good and the good of the North — but he sees the truth in that moment, in the cold, wild fear in her eyes. She does not want him.

“I considered it, of course,” Daenerys is saying, “but I cannot leave my children alone when I am gone. I must have heirs, and they must be Targaryens.”

Davos’s face pinches in thought. “What of the North?” he asks Daenerys.

She looks happy. Satisfied. Her hand still lingers on Sansa’s shoulder.

“Lord Varys has been teaching me the history of the Seven Kingdoms. I see no reason why the North, like Dorne, may not retain a degree of sovereignty and join the Seven Kingdoms under my rule through a marriage alliance. You might still call yourselves princes and princesses, I don’t mind.”

“Oh,” says Sansa, very faint. “How kind.”

* * *

Jon doesn't get drunk like he did before the knives, but he tries. He drinks deep from his mug of ale, more and more, hoping it will dull the raw edge of his anger, hoping it will distract him from the sound of Sansa trying to save herself from a third unwanted marriage. The more Sansa pleads for her freedom, the more he drinks.

“Easy there,” says Davos. “There may be hope yet.”

They’ve retired to Daenerys’s rooms, he and Daenerys and Sansa, and the two Hands, but aside from a few attempts by Tyrion to once again rationalize the idea, the men have largely been silent. It is Sansa and Daenerys whose voices have filled the air all this time — no more than half an hour, surely, and yet it feels like days, weeks, as guilt and ale gnaw at Jon’s stomach.

First, Sansa tried to tell Daenerys that, for all intents and purposes, Jon was her brother, and it seemed unlikely that the North would rally behind such a marriage. _Besides_ , she’d added, a faint blush staining her cheeks, _I fear that Jon could not — would not wish to — that consummation would be difficult_.

Things only got worse when Daenerys responded with that tinkling laugh of hers and said, _Nonsense, Jon knows his duty. Besides, dear girl, you are quite lovely. Under the right circumstances, I doubt any man could resist you._ She’d turned to Jon, grinning. _Isn’t she lovely? Such pretty hair. Spread out naked on a bed of furs, even you couldn’t say no, Jon._

He hates that he could picture it, as vividly real as if it were a memory, Sansa and her red hair and her woman’s body, her smooth skin and the dark thatch between her legs, the way her teats would feel, heavy in his hands. The sounds she’d make as she came apart beneath his tongue.

The fantasy came to him so fully-formed that he knew he must've imagined it before, in some half-suppressed daydream. 

Instead of answering Daenerys, Jon clenched his jaw and stared down at his boots.

Daenerys easily tosses aside Sansa’s next defense: that it is clear that she, Daenerys, has certain affections for Jon. Would it not be uncomfortable, perhaps even painful, for Daenerys to ask him to marry someone else? 

_We are not the sort of people who marry for love._ She'd parroted Tyrion’s earlier words lightly, as if they had not made her furious at the time. _I am sorry to ask you to enter into such a practical arrangement. I know this is not your first such marriage, but although there may be no love — not of the right sort — Jon will be good to you. And in time, once you’ve had three or four children, you might take a lover._

Jon hadn’t been able to keep himself from hissing Daenerys’s name, but she’d only laughed. 

_Such things are perfectly common_ , she told Sansa knowingly. _You may have your lovers … and he may have his._ She didn’t look at him while she said it. She didn’t need to. They all felt the meaning in her words. 

Without needing to be asked, Tyrion had dashed more ale into Jon’s mug.

Now Daenerys is telling Sansa that eventually she and Jon needn’t even live together. “I will want to raise my heir in King’s Landing, but you might come with the child and leave management of the North to Jon.”

“Thank you, Your Grace, but I do not plan to live in King’s Landing again.”

“No, no, I suppose not. Well, better yet, Jon can bring my heir to me and you will manage the North in his stead.” She pats Sansa’s hand. “Come now, Sansa, are you really so opposed to this union?”

Sansa sighs, pressing her fingers to her temple, revealing, for one brief moment, the depths of her exhaustion. She needs sleep, they all do, but Daenerys doesn’t care. Jon knows she won’t stop until she has her way.

“It’s not for my sake that I object,” says Sansa finally. “I have endured worse in marriage than a lack of love. But Jon shouldn’t — ”

_“Enough!”_

The room goes quiet, everyone’s eyes snapping to where Jon stands. Slowly, he lifts his hand from the table he’d struck. “That’s _enough_ ,” he repeats. His head feels like it might split open and his heart feels as if it already has. “Daenerys, I need to speak to you. Alone.”

* * *

“I know this isn’t ideal,” Daenerys says after everyone has gone. “I know we’d hoped for something else.”

Jon eyes the door, wanting to be certain no one is lingering outside. He’d instructed Davos to escort Sansa to her chambers, and to make sure Ghost was at her door before he left. She’d made a face as if she’d like to object, but for once his look was enough to silence her. For once she didn’t fight him.

“I won’t do it,” he says once he's satisfied they are alone.

“You said that you could wed her and bed her.”

He curses himself. “ _If_ it’s what she wanted. But it’s not.”

“She’s never going to _want_ to marry you, Jon. You are a brother to her, just as she is a sister to you. But she said herself that she’s not opposed, except that you are being so stubborn about it.” 

Daenerys, slinking closer, murmurs, “I know that it’s me you’d rather marry.” She cradles his jaw in her palm, her fingers scraping through his beard. “I know I am the wife you want. But Tyrion and Missandei were right. My dragons are more important than whatever we may feel.”

He wants to tell her that right now he feels _nothing_ for her, nothing except aggravation, but he’s not so far gone as to make a mistake like that.

There must be some way to make her understand. Something he can tell her, about why he cannot marry Sansa. Why he cannot touch her. He tries, “My sister is — ”

“She’s a sweet girl,” Daenerys interrupts. “And more docile than I anticipated. She will make a good wife. I understand now why the Northerners admire her — she’s something lovely to fight for, like a wounded doe who’s still on her feet somehow. You can’t help but want to protect such a fragile thing.” Her voice grows sharper. “But I am the queen. I am _your_ queen, and I will have the North in Targaryen hands.”

He bites the inside of his mouth, fighting back his first impulses. _Be smarter_ , he thinks. _Play the long game._

“Fine,” he says. “But it can wait till the war’s over.”

Daenerys strokes his cheek, her thumb trailing up over the ridge of his eyebrow, along the scar. “Don’t be foolish. I want an heir, and that’s the sort of business that’s better to start sooner than later. Besides, once you tell your people that you are a Targaryen, they may have some frustrations, but if you marry their precious Sansa, then she’ll be a Targaryen too. The North will understand that my name, _our_ name, is the future of Westeros.”

“And if I refuse?”

Her violet eyes harden. “Don’t.”

“If I fall in the war, what'll happen?”

“If you fall, I will be extremely displeased.”

“What'll happen _to her_?”

He doesn't think she'll respond. For a moment she only smiles and shrugs lazily out of her cloak, letting it drop to her feet, and only once he's looked down at the cloak and then back up to her face does she say, “If you die and Sansa Stark carries your child, then I will take the babe as my heir and leave her as Wardeness of the North, free to remarry at her leisure.”

She’s still wearing the silver gown from the feast, the one in which she dazzled the room with her beauty. She unfastens a clasp at her throat, and Jon frowns, averting his eyes. He knows from experience that her dresses are different than the Westerosi style, though he could hardly say how — fewer laces, he thinks, fewer hooks — and removing them takes little effort.

“And if she isn’t with child?”

“Then I will pray that my dragons forgive me for providing no one to care for them in the future.” She undoes the last few clasps, peeling the front of her gown open to reveal her bodice, her full breasts rising and falling with each breath.

He clears his throat. “Dany — ”

“And I will have to arrange another marriage, to bind the North to me. Perhaps more than one. Your youngest sister might make someone a charming match.”

She’s stepped out of her dress entirely now, and he takes in the sight of her naked body, sensual and familiar. Even knowing now what she is to him, it would not be so difficult to touch her again, to fall into old habits. Keep drinking and try to forget about Sansa, keep drinking and ignore the threats Daenerys offers as sweetly as gifts. Kiss her. Fuck her like she wants to him to, and maybe even convince her with his mouth and his cock and his fingers that she should leave Sansa alone, leave all of his family alone.

But he doubts it. The more he gives Daenerys what she wants, the more she will try to take.

“Whatever happens, you will still have me,” she says, reaching for his hand and lifting it to her breast.

“I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Her eyes drop to his trousers, and she smirks. “I can help with that.”

“No,” he says more forcefully, jerking away, and he watches her withdraw her hand to her side before he continues. “If I’m to marry Sansa before the battle begins, it will have to be tomorrow, and I will not dishonor her the night before our wedding.”

“I appreciate that you’ve finally listened to me,” she says, “but there’s no need to be so hasty.” There’s no mistaking Daenerys’s huff of annoyance or the tone of condescension in her voice. She may like that Jon is the sort of man to care about his sister's honor, but Sansa herself is no concern of hers. She says, “Weddings require more than half a day’s planning. The two of you will marry in, let’s say, one week.”

But he shakes his head. “We don’t have that long.”

“And why not?”

She’s angling her face up at him, watching him through her long, dark lashes. Her playful smile has returned. For the first time, he is almost grateful that he cannot ignore the oncoming battle. 

“Put your dress back on,” he says, grim and cold. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

* * *

Despite the ache in his chest, Jon falls asleep within moments of crawling into bed. He dreams of the resurrected dragon and the silver fall of Daenerys’s hair. He dreams of a cave long ago and a girl there with a crooked smile. He dreams of dragons and demons, fire and ice. He dreams of Sansa softly weeping as he drapes a cloak of black and red over her shoulders.

* * *

It’s mid-morning when Jon rises, and by then, it’s too late. Somehow, word of the night’s events — or some version of them, anyway — has gone round the castle and back again, and if his people do not know all of his secrets already, they soon will. It should’ve been him who told them, who said the words _I am a Targaryen_ , but he can’t deny that alongside the horror there is some relief that it’s over with.

Arya’s the first to tell him of the rumors, barreling into his chambers and slamming the door behind her so violently that he fears for a moment someone is after her.

“ _Dragons_ ,” she breathes, those big eyes of hers conveying nothing so much as shock. “I wake up and there’s _dragons_ outside and Daenerys fucking Targaryen is swanning around like she owns Winterfell, and somehow everyone knows your mom was actually Lyanna, and now I heard from Podrick bloody Payne that you’re supposed to marry Sansa. Our sister! What in seven hells happened last night?”

At first he wants to be sick. But Arya is standing there, waiting in amazement, so he decides it is best to just tell her as much as he can without compromising either himself or Sansa. When she starts muttering, “It’s the Lannisters, I bet it’s them, I bet this is their idea of a joke,” Jon doesn’t have the heart to dissuade her from believing it.

Finally, Arya says, “You’re not really gonna do it, though, are you? It was gross enough when you were gonna marry Daenerys.”

He’d like to tell her that of course it won’t really happen, that it’s just a ridiculous idea that Tyrion and Varys put in Daenerys’s head and eventually she’ll realize the folly of it, but now, in the light of morning, he’s not so sure. She had not liked the news of the Wall’s collapse, and had taken the news of Viserion very badly indeed. 

In a way it was for the best. The fate of her dragon seems to have strengthened her resolve in the battle against the White Walkers, because when he told her they must leave in three days, she’d uttered not a word about Cersei’s missing forces or about coercing the North into some elaborate acknowledgment of her rightful rule. 

On the other hand, the news also seems to have convinced her even more thoroughly that she must have a Targaryen heir. She’d been dry-eyed when he spoke of what Viserion had become, but he’d heard the emotion in her voice when vowed that her dragons would never again come to harm.

“I don’t know,” is all Jon says to Arya. “It’s all become such — ” He groans.

“Utter shit?”

He cracks a smile. “Something like that.” 

“The dragons have everyone scared. Sansa’s trying to keep them calm, and one of Daenerys’s advisors is trying to help — the woman, the translator? The Imp tried but he got shouted down by Lyanna Mormont and fat old Glover as soon as he opened his mouth.”

“Have you seen ‘em? The dragons?”

Arya nods.

“What d’you think?”

“I wish I could’ve seen them when I was younger and stupider. It would’ve been exciting then. Now it’s just — ” She shrugs and rests her hand on the pommel of her sword, reminding him of Brienne. “I want to kill them before they kill us.” There’s a gleam in her eye, hard as steel. “Their mother, too.”

“I won’t let Daenerys touch you, any of you — ”

But Arya just shakes her head. “It’s you and Sansa I’m worried about. The way she’s using you two … ” Her lip curls, disdain or disgust, probably both.

He eyes his little sister carefully. He still doesn’t really know where she’s been all these years, but she’s become sly, observant. That much is clear. “D’you happen to know who I’ve got to thank for telling everyone about all this?”

She _hmm_ s thoughtfully. “He’s too smart to leave a trail, but I’d be surprised if that eunuch wasn’t part of this. It was his idea for you and Sansa to marry?” Jon nods. “If everyone knows about you, especially with those dragons here now, they’ve kind of got you backed into a corner, don’t they? Our people are idiots, the lot of them, so they don’t trust that you’re really a Stark.”

“I’m _not_ — ” he begins, but she rolls her eyes and tells him to shut up before he can say it.

Then she says, “I’m not as clever with this sort of thing as Sansa, but maybe the Spider and the Imp and whoever else think if our shit-for-brains bannermen turn against you, you’ll have no choice but to marry Sansa and have a bunch of, _ugh_ , Stark-Targaryen babies for Daenerys.” 

“I could tell the Northerners I won’t do it, even if it means they don’t trust me.” He remembers what Daenerys had said to him last night, the threats she’d folded into her seduction. One way or another, she will have a marriage, and she will have the North. “But that wouldn’t be the end of it.”

Arya furrows her brow, thinking, until she says at last, “Lots of people die in battle. Maybe Daenerys will be one of them. Then no one can make you marry Sansa and the Northern idiots can’t think you’re loyal to some conqueror queen.”

“Aye, maybe she’ll fall,” he agrees, “but maybe she won’t. Maybe I will. If she survives and I don’t, I won’t be able to do anything to protect any of you from her.”

In a way, it’s funny. Before he came back to Winterfell, he'd kept himself from thinking about the future, about what it could mean for the world to survive the battle to come. Because he knew that he would almost certainly die, he decided that it didn’t warrant considering: some future he might ever get to see. It’s how he could give away the North. It’s how he could call Daenerys his queen. Because the Long Night was coming, and after that, why would it matter?

Now he is trying so desperately and so futilely to preserve a future for his family that brings them happiness. Now, he is looking ahead and thinking about marriages and children and titles, about everything he’d forsworn in another lifetime, kneeling before a Weirwood as he recited the words. _I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls._

He is a watcher no longer. He must act. He must live.

But, he reminds himself, if he wants a future, any future, for himself or anyone else, then he must destroy the Night King, and to destroy the Night King, he needs Daenerys and her dragons.

He would do almost anything if it meant Sansa could be happy and free, but he realizes that he can’t let her die for it. He won’t. Besides, Daenerys was right about one thing: it needn’t be forever. In time, Sansa could be with someone she truly loved, someone who meant something more to her than duty, someone who brought her real happiness. But only if she lived long enough.

“I hate it,” Arya says suddenly. “It's all awful.”

“It is. I’m sorry.”

Her glare is fierce for a moment, and then she’s wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on tight. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “It’s only sort of your fault.”

He blinks back his tears and ruffles his little sister’s hair. “Gods, I’ve missed you,” he says, and doesn’t let go of her for a long time.

* * *

After Arya leaves, Brienne, stone-faced and silent and nevertheless radiating judgment, brings Jon a tray of food and a note from Sansa.

_Jon,_

_Stay in your rooms today. I am handling the bannermen, but your presence will only incense them further. I have assured them that you knew nothing of your parentage when you bent the knee to Daenerys Targaryen and that you certainly had no part in the appearance of her dragons here last night._

_I am afraid to say that our hands have been forced. I know this is not what you wanted, but for the sake of the coming battle, the North must stand united. I may not know military strategy, but I know a divided force is a weakened force._

_We are to wed at sundown in the Godswood. Someone will come to fetch you when it’s time._

_I am so very sorry. I swear I did not intend for this to happen._

_Forgive me._

_Sansa_

He runs his fingers over the indent of her script before he feeds the parchment to the flames.

* * *

For the rest of the day, he doesn’t think about it. He can’t. Every time his mind strays — to red hair, or the Godswood, or the pleading words of her letter ( _Forgive me_ ) — the sickening rush of confusion and frustration that floods through him threatens to dissolve his carefully-held composure. He focuses instead on the war, on the survival of the living, on the survival of his family … his wife?

No. He shakes his head. He must think about the battles to come. He must think about his enemy, and what it will take to destroy him.

After he eats, he sends for Davos and Tyrion, and when they turn up at his door, they've brought with them the Kingslayer, barely disguised in a hooded cloak. Jon doesn't like Jaime Lannister and he certainly doesn't trust him; he'd have to be a fool to trust a man who remained loyal to Cersei for so long. More than that, Jaime's golden hair and winning smile remind him of Joffrey, the way the prince had strutted through Winterfell with Sansa, utterly charmed, at his side. He can't see Sansa being swayed by handsome looks and easy conversation anymore, but _something_ has persuaded her accept Jaime Lannister into their home and convinced her to hide him from Daenerys.

Then again, it would be madness to refuse the help of a legendary swordsman with years of experience in battle. Even Jon can see that.

He gathers them around the unfurled map of the North and begins to speak.

The conversation is long, circular, utterly exhausting, as the men push stone markers back and forth across the map, arguing for and against Jon's plans, trying to decide the best method for defeating an inhuman force. No one is even sure that any of the old rules still apply. Even once they've finally agreed that they will, as planned, use Last Hearth as a stronghold and attempt to keep the dead as far north as the Gift, Tyrion says, “That’s the battle on the ground. What about the air?” and they must go another ten rounds on how best to use the dragons.

Although Daenerys is absent, she has made her preferences clear. She will face the thing that once was Viserion; she'd told Jon that she would avenge her child. Part of Jon fears that when she sees the dragon she will hesitate, but she must know by now that the wights are empty shells, tools of the Night King and nothing more.

Jon also tells Tyrion that Daenerys will have to take the dragons ahead. She can wipe out much of the horde before the men even arrive, but once their forces are on the ground, dragonfire will be too dangerous to use. “Make sure she understands that,” he says, and if it sounds like a threat, so be it.

They move on to discussing the armies and their maintenance: what Jon can reasonably expect of the Unsullied and the Dothraki, especially in the cold; how many dragonglass weapons have been forged in his absence and how well-trained are those who've taken up arms in recent months; whether everyone will be adequately clothed, armored, and fed so that the cold does not kill them before the Others have their chance. 

“From what I understand,” Davos says carefully, “Lady Stark has seen to all that.”

Jon, shoulders stiffening, keeps his eyes on the map, staring hard until the black lines running together as his vision unfocuses. The familiar names of keeps and rivers and woods of the North, names he has known all his life, quiver and blur.

He can feel everyone watching him.

Jaime Lannister, arrogant fool that he is, breaks the silence. “That’s right,” he says, not even bothering to mask his amusement. “I hear congratulations are in order.” His laugh burns in Jon’s ears. “First Targaryens, then Lannisters, and now the Starks. Everyone’s fucking their sisters.”

The growl that escapes Jon’s mouth makes Jaime laugh harder, until Jon lunges from where he stands and grabs the Kingslayer by his shirtfront. Even after the laughter dies, Jaime is still grinning like he knows something Jon doesn’t, and Jon only releases him when Davos, laying on hand on his shoulder, mutters that it’s not worth it.

“Listen to the old man, Snow,” says Jaime, stepping out of Jon’s reach. “Wouldn’t want to show up to your wedding with a blackened eye.” 

The Lannisters take their leave shortly thereafter, Tyrion vaguely apologetic for his brother’s behavior, and then Davos makes his excuses too. “Listen, son,” he says before he goes. “This isn’t how any man imagines his wedding day, but try to find some happiness tonight. It may the last chance either of you get for some time.” He claps Jon on the shoulder, squeezes once, and then departs.

Jon grips the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turn white, the two words _your wedding_ lodged in his chest, somehow bigger than a dragon, bigger than a castle, bigger than a war. Right now none of them compare to the weight of his rage, for the only thing bigger than his anger is his grief.

* * *

After choking down what he can of his supper, Jon dons his clothes from the previous night’s feast, the ones Sansa put so much work into. They are the finest thing he owns.

She’ll have had no time to make a dress, or to have one made, as she certainly used to dream of doing, and, he realizes, she’ll have no maiden’s cloak either. He has no Targaryen cloak to give her. They will have only each other, the furs on their backs and all the family they have left in the world as witnesses.

To his surprise, it is Lord Royce who comes for him. He greets Jon cooly. “Snow. It’s time.”

He escorts Jon in silence, through the castle and out its doors, into the falling light and the falling snow of the coming night. He leads him out across the grounds, to the Godswood and the heart tree, its red eyes bold amidst all the snow — bold and damning. How many times will he make promises to the Old Gods that he does not know how to keep?

The group that has gathered is mercifully small. A handful of the most important Northern lords are there, which he knows is Sansa’s doing, and of course there is Daenerys and the innermost members of her retinue, including, unfortunately, Tyrion Lannister. It does not seem right that Sansa’s first husband should be here for this, but it’s not up to Jon. None of this has been up to Jon.

Sam and Gilly stand toward the back, behind Missandei and Jorah Mormont. Little Sam is nestled against Sam’s chest, one arm flung around his father’s neck.

There is Bran, too, and with him both Davos and Brienne, the latter of whom watches him mistrustfully.

Jon looks away from her, scanning the godswood for any other witnesses. No sign of Arya, but she never was interested in weddings, and the thought of this wedding in particular is repulsive to her. It would not be so surprising if she chose not to attend.

“Stand here,” Lord Royce says, roughly arranging Jon beneath the heart tree, and then he leans in close, his mouth at Jon’s ear, voice quiet and deadly. “Sansa Stark is our true queen. We will never follow a Targaryen.”

Jon catches him before he can turn away. “Good,” he says. “That’s good.”

He waits for what feels like a very long time, every thought that passes through his mind fizzing into nothingness before he can finish it. His heart keeps jolting in his chest. He remembers that moment when he gasped awake, life returning to him, and with it cold and pain. It feels much the same now.

And then he sees her.

She is flanked by two escorts: Arya on one side, Ghost on the other, each of them with a dangerous look in their eye. Her self-appointed protectors, pillars of strength he knows she did not have the last time she did this. The sight of them soothes him a little. He hopes it soothes her too.

Sansa looks the same as she did yesterday, her dress and her cloak and her furs all gray. Her hair is braided back very simply, the tail of her plait over her shoulder. She’s paler than usual, but there's a hint of rosiness in her cheeks and at the tip of her nose, gifts from the cold. She looks tired. She looks beautiful.

It happens so fast. She stands before him. She takes his hands. They say the words that he was never meant to say, the words she has already said too many times.

When the time comes, he kisses the corner of her mouth, the dry peck of a sibling. He tries not to look at her, but then she squeezes his hand in her own and attempts a sweet and fleeting smile. He has never been so lost as when he looks into her eyes.

Above them, the dragons circle.

* * *

There will be no formal feast, she tells him as they trek back to the castle, not after last night’s, not on such short notice and with war rations to think of, but she says that the bannermen have gathered to celebrate them in the Great Hall tonight, to offer up toasts before — 

Her mouth snaps shut and her arm, linked through his, stiffens.

The party is strangely melancholy. It is small, for one: Daenerys is smart enough to understand that she should stay away, and her people follow suit. The Knights of the Vale are absent as well; Lord Royce must’ve deemed his presence at the ceremony sufficient. Even Sam and Gilly return to their room, eager to put their squalling son to bed. And so it is only Northerners who are present, the very men and women who once called Jon their king, who’d hailed him as the heir to Ned and Robb’s legacies. 

No one knows what to do with the day’s turn of events, and if Jon were to guess by the low murmurs of conversation throughout the hall, many of them are still trying to piece it all together. They know the dragons are an imminent threat, and finding a way into Daenerys’s good graces is no longer optional. They also know they have not yet been asked to pledge fealty to her. This, they must realize, means that the Starks are still doing what they can to protect the North. They can recognize that Sansa has more power now than she did yesterday, and they like that, but at the same time, they do not like to see her on Jon’s arm. They stare, they sneer, they frown their disapproval. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s a Targaryen or because he’s meant to be her brother. Maybe they don’t either.

But somehow Sansa pulls them all along in her masquerade of false cheer. She toasts to a stronger North, to a more powerful alliance, to the certain victory that awaits them. She praises her people, their loyalty and their perseverance, their ability to survive. 

By the end of the night, Sansa’s performed a miracle: the Northerners are in good spirits, swayed to the belief that whatever misgivings they may have about this union, it has bolstered the North and bolstered Sansa’s standing in it. She has managed to imply, without promising anything, that the marriage has secured a guarantee of sovereignty for the North after the war, and she even convinces them all that although this was of course never the match she envisioned for herself, she is happy to have a brave and honorable Northerner at her side. “I think if he were here, my father would be happy too.”

She doesn't notice Arya choking on her drink when she says that, or maybe she only pretends not to.

Finally, after more than an hour of speeches and toasts, watered-down wine and very little food, Sansa turns to Jon. “I’m tired,” she whispers. “Do you mind if we … ?” He doesn’t know what face he makes, but she blushes. “We should be seen leaving together. There’ll be no bedding ceremony but we should at least … ”

“I understand,” he says. “Let’s go.”

They rise together to take their leave, and, all at once, the revelry and chatter fades into silence. Everyone is looking at them.

They all must be wondering what will happen next. A strange awkwardness descends over the bannermen, their gazes skipping back and forth between Jon and Sansa as if they have finally understood what's happened, and for the first time all night, Arya won’t look at either of them. Jon swallows. The place where Sansa’s hand rests on his arm is burning. But she extracts them from the room easily, with graciousness and good humor, and only when they are out of the hall does she return her hand to her side. “Sorry,” she says. She smiles at him. “You did well in there.”

 _He_ did well? She’s the one who’s kept the whole bloody castle from falling apart. Three days of the dragon queen and her armies, and already the world was threatening to tumble down around their ears. It is Sansa who’s held Winterfell together, Sansa who is its beating heart.

“We’d be dead a dozen times over if it weren’t for you,” Jon says. “You’re the one who’s saved us.”

He hears her inhale deeply, then exhale, then inhale once again. “Thank you, Jon,” she says. She catches his sleeve, runs her thumb along the perfect lines of her own embroidery. “But we’re not saved yet. Come to my rooms.”

He does the only thing he can do: he obeys.

* * *

In the long-lost golden days of Winterfell's summer, the lord's chamber belonged to Ned and Catelyn Stark. Although Lord and Lady Stark officially had private rooms to which they might retire separately, as many a lord and lady do, everyone knew that in truth they shared one room and one bed, spent their evenings in each other’s company and their nights in each other’s arms. Everyone knew that they were in love. It was a quiet love, steady but never showy, nothing anyone would ever write songs about — but love it was. Of that there could be no doubt.

Whatever resentment Jon may hold toward Catelyn, whatever grief and betrayal he may feel over Ned, he knows that when he imagines love, he imagines the two of them. As a boy he’d wanted nothing more than to be their trueborn son, and to one day grow into a man like Ned, a husband and a father, with a woman like Catelyn as his wife and the mother of his children. To live in Winterfell, or a place just like it, and grow the Stark brood as robustly as his father had. For all his own private sadnesses, Jon had always known that _this_ was the model to strive for, this was the shape of love.

Later, he learned that love came in other shapes. It could be three arrows piercing flesh, or the last breath of a dying girl. It could be Ghost’s protection, his watchful eye over that which was most precious to Jon. Sometimes, love was a cudgel with which he beat himself, an ugly truth about himself that he was afraid to face.

More than anything, he knows that love is not this: Sansa, nervous and shivering in the room that belonged to her parents, standing before him but unable to meet his eyes. Afraid — of him? Maybe. Afraid of the way that she’s been trapped. He may look like Eddard Stark and she may look like Catelyn Tully, but they are not them. They can never be them.

“Sansa — ”

“You’re shaking.”

He looks down to find that it's true, then looks up again, blinking dumbly.

Sansa reaches for his trembling hand, carefully closing it into a loose fist that she holds cupped in her own hands. His heart is beating in his ears. It's beating in his throat. Her thumbs slide over his knuckles, a slow, soothing movement that he realizes she’s timed to her breaths. For each inhale, her thumbs stroke one way, for each exhale, they stroke back.

“We have to trust each other,” she says.

He remembers the words, and the kiss he’d pressed to her forehead that day, and how he’d known in that moment that he would do anything for her. The depths of his feelings had scared him then. Now, he is terrified.

“I trust you,” he says quietly, pleadingly. “Do you trust me?”

“Always.”

Before he can talk himself out of it, he opens the closed fist that she is still holding, splaying his fingers before catching her hand in his, palm to palm. He turns her hand over so that he can press a kiss to her knuckles. It’s what he might’ve done in some other world where he could’ve courted her properly, won her love, married her on a day of joy.

And then he kneels.

“Jon?”

“If you trust me, trust that I’m not going to hurt you.” Does she understand? Does she see why he’s kneeled before her? This is an oath, as solemn as any marriage vow. “We’ll tell whatever lies we have to. I won’t touch you. I won’t hurt you.” 

He looks up at her, but he doesn’t know what her expression means. She’s biting the inside of her cheek. She hasn’t pulled her hand from his grip. 

He says, “It’s not fair, this happening to you. You deserve so much more than this. You deserve a choice, a _real_ choice.”

“And what about you?” she asks, her brow furrowing. “Don’t you deserve a choice?”

He almost laughs at that. “I was a man of the Night’s Watch,” he reminds her. “I was never supposed to take a wife, never supposed to have a family other than my brothers in black. I was a bastard boy with no future.” He releases her hand, and watches her slowly draw it up to her chest, where she rests it lightly on her collarbone, her fingernails worrying at a seam in her dress. “Sansa, you are — you were meant to exist in a different world than me, a better world. But here I am. What better choice could I make than you?”

There’s a sharp intake of air, and when he looks up, he sees her blue eyes shining. It only takes her a moment to blink the tears away, but he’s not fooled.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because there is nothing else he can say. He’s pledged himself to her in every way that he knows how. He will leave if that’s what she asks of him; he will find a way to treat her as if she is only his sister, if that’s what she needs. He will do whatever she wants. 

He braces himself to stand up, but before he can rise, she has dropped to her knees too, her skirt pooling around her. Impossibly, she is smiling. 

“You’re not angry with me?” she says.

He cannot make sense of her growing smile or the way her hand floats up to his hairline, fingers brushing some stray curl from his face. The way her touch lingers, delicately tracing the shell of his ear.

“I’m — ” He shivers. “I’m _furious_ , but not with you. Why would I be angry with _you_?”

“I thought you believed that I’d trapped you,” she whispers. “That I encouraged Daenerys in this marriage.”

“I know you didn’t put this scheme in her head.”

“But you seemed so unhappy. So I tried to stop it. I tried to talk her out of it.” Her thumb brushes across his cheekbone. “I believed that this wasn’t what you wanted.”

It takes him a long time to answer, and when the words come he barely registers what he’s saying. “Of course … I didn’t want this … ” She pierces him with a look, her hand on his face stilling its caresses. He says, “I don’t want anything you don’t want.”

“Jon.” Her voice is low enough he that he can _feel_ it. “You need to trust me now, and listen to what I tell you.” She looks at him until he meets her eyes and then, in a slow, deliberate tone, perhaps more haughty than she realizes, she says, “I want to be your wife. I want you to be my husband. Listen to me, Jon. I want you. I love you.”

 _Oh._

From the pit of his stomach to the top of his head, up and down each limb, in his eyes and in his throat, there is only her. He’s blazing for her, burning with nothing so mundane as dragonfire. Dragonfire ruins. This is something else.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, a rosy flush climbing up her throat, across her cheeks. “I am your wife, remember? Am I not allowed to want my husband?”

But her gaze flickers down, away from him, as her tongue peeks out to wet her lips. She is nervous. She doubts him.

He never wants her to doubt him again.

It takes only seconds to get her in his arms, and it's still too long. It's not quite clear how they manage it, gravitating together so swiftly that they pull themselves and each other up to their feet in one forceful moment. Unsteady, they stumble into each other and have to hang on for balance: his hands on her hips, her arms around his neck, bodies flush — dizzy, giddy, grinning.

He loves the way her lips part for him, and how she breathes, all fluttery, when he leans in; he loves that he has to tilt his head up, just a little, to kiss her.

He loves her. Gods above, does he love her, and right now, with her lips and her hips soft beneath his touch, and her love still ringing in his ears, he cannot feel shame. Right now, he doesn’t even feel fear.

Eventually, his noses his way up her neck and murmurs against the shell of her ear, “I’m sorry. I’ve made so many mistakes.” He leans back to look at her, this extraordinary woman, _his wife_. “Forgive me,” he says, but she just takes his face in her hands and kisses him quiet.

* * *

All of their troubles will still be waiting in the morning: the war to the north, the mad queen to the south, Daenerys and her children and the unsteady support of the Northern bannermen, the merciless snow and unrelenting cold, the hunger that is already spreading and will only grow worse, much worse, before winter begins to thaw. In the morning, Jon must once again become commander, warrior, killer. He will have to tell lies that taste bitter on his tongue, and he will have to pretend, once again, to be something he isn’t: a loyal nephew, an uncaring husband. Tomorrow, the sun will rise, and Jon will do what he must to ensure the survival of his family, of his pack.

Tomorrow, Sansa will guard herself with layers of wool and fur, she will don her icy mask and preside over Winterfell, once more become the North’s long-suffering symbol of strength. No one will know how soft she is, or how warm. That’s how it must be.

But as Jon unlaces Sansa’s dress with shaking fingers, as he watches her loosen her hair from its braid, as he walks to the bed with her, his hand twined with hers, he knows that he has tonight. It is more than he ever dreamed of, and, at least for now, it will have to be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ......  
> ......  
> ......
> 
> Well, there we go! Thanks for sticking with it, and I hope you enjoyed it. 
> 
> I will say now that I'm planning on writing an epilogue at some point because I wanted to write the wedding night in a bit more ~detail~ if you know what I mean, but I was already at 12,000 words! I don't know how to be concise. So: the epilogue is DEFINITELY in the works (and will just be uploaded as a fifth chapter), but I might take a tiny break from this universe to work on a few other fics for a while.
> 
> I also have an idea for a (hopefully short) sequel set after the NK is defeated, so stay tuned. :)
> 
> (ETA: Apparently a lot of you hate (my) Jon and are still angry with him. Sorry, don't know what to telly you. Hopefully the epilogue will help resolve some of those feelings?)
> 
> As ever, feel free to come find me on tumblr @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth

**Author's Note:**

> I'm bad at multichap fics but I don't see this being more than 1 or 2 more chapters. Also, I've got a GoT tumblr if that's something you're into. @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth


End file.
